Retrieval
by Refur
Summary: A supposedly simple mission goes south when Auggie's past catches up to Annie. Now complete.
1. Chapter 1

This is a crossover with Jake 2.0, but told very much from the point of view of Covert Affairs, so you don't need to have seen Jake 2.0 to understand it. You should see it anyway, though. It's awesome.

Spoilers to 1x05 for Covert Affairs, 1x16 for Jake 2.0. Serious artistic licence taken with all things CIA and NSA.

oOoOo

**Retrieval**

**Chapter One**

Thirty-six hours later, arms aching from the handcuffs and with nothing to look at but the back of a blindfold, Annie decided it was all the fault of the coffee. That was where it all started. In fact, maybe there was even a reason – beyond vindictiveness – that newbies have to get the coffee. Maybe it was, like, a way to weed out the incompetent ones, the ones that can manage to pass a hundred practical tests at the Farm or even in the field but can't bring coffee to a divisional director of the CIA without accidentally dumping it on her lap. Because getting shot at by bad guys is one thing, but meeting Joan Campbell's eyes when you've just ruined her dress? That is something else all together.

If it hadn't been for the coffee seeping through her dress and burning her legs, if it hadn't been for Annie knocking over a pile of papers trying to find a Kleenex or a rag or _anything_ to salvage the situation, maybe Joan would've carried on the argument she was having on the phone, maybe she would've kept saying _no_ and _I can't spare any agents right now_ and _remember what happened last time_, like she had been when Annie came in. Maybe she wouldn't have noticed Annie, wouldn't have remembered that she had a greenhorn only four months off the Farm who could mostly be spared for anything, as long as it didn't involve transporting hot liquids. And then maybe Annie wouldn't have been sent on the mission with Duarte, and maybe she would've been home right now instead of bouncing around in the back of a truck, and hey, maybe it would rain chocolate sprinkles and espresso.

Later still, so acutely aware of the gun pressed to her temple that her mind started to wander, Annie realised she had been wrong: the coffee had nothing to do with it. Maybe there was no such thing as random when you worked for the CIA.

All the same, if she got out of this alive, she should probably volunteer to pay Joan's dry-cleaning bill.

oOoOo

"Annie." Auggie was smiling in her general direction before she even made it all the way through the door to his office. "How is the world of espionage and high fashion today?"

Annie'd long since given up asking him how he knew it was her. One week, she'd tried changing her perfume every day and wearing flats. Not only had Auggie consistently identified her, he'd made comments about her being two inches shorter than normal. She was beginning to suspect he'd somehow programmed his laser cane to recognise her. That was exactly the kind of thing he'd do.

"Oh, you know, same old, same old," she said. "Hey, Auggie, what do you know about the NSA?"

"The NSA," Auggie said, typing something rapidly and running his index finger along the line of braille at the base of his keyboard. "The NSA's core missions are to protect U.S. national security systems and to produce foreign signals intelligence information."

"What?" Annie peered at the screen. The address bar read _.gov_. "Oh, come on, Auggie, you know what I mean. What do _you_ know about the NSA."

Auggie turned back to face her, leaning back in his chair. "They're a government agency," he said. "They do spy stuff."

"'Spy stuff'?" Annie made a face. "Could you be a little more vague?"

"OK." Auggie said. "They do stuff."

Annie let out a growl of frustration. "Do you hate me this morning, is that it?"

"Look." Auggie folded his hands across his stomach. "How do you think Joan would react if she found out that a mid-level functionary in the Department of Transportation knew details about the way the CIA operates and the missions it takes on?"

Annie thought about it. And then tried not to think about it.

"Exactly," said Auggie. "The CIA and the NSA are two separate branches of government with explicit interest in keeping their affairs secret. I know as much about the NSA as Joe Transport does, and with any luck, Joe NSA knows exactly that much about us."

"Right," Annie said. "Um... but inter-agency co-operation-"

Auggie snorted. "Is a myth. And not one of those myths that is really real but we don't want anyone to find out, either."

"OK," said Annie. She'd known Joan was pissed at her, but she hadn't realised quite how much.

"Why the interest, anyway?" Auggie asked, sliding his hand across the desktop to his coffee cup. "Thinking of defecting?"

"Well, it's just-" Annie started, but that was as far as she got – Joan appearing in the doorway always had that effect on her.

"Auggie." Joan's tone was all efficiency, and Auggie sat up a little straighter. "Make sure anything over security level three is locked down. The NSA is coming to visit."

"What?" Auggie was more than sitting up straight, now, he was rising to his feet.

"You heard me. Annie, Director Beckett wants you to give the tour personally. Meet me in my office in five minutes."

And then she was gone, as coolly as she'd arrived. Annie hoped her own career at the CIA would be a long one, but she was pretty sure she'd never be able to _glide_ like that even if she practiced for a hundred years.

"I guess it's not a myth any more," she said, turning back to Auggie. He was on his feet still, but only half-way out of his chair, like he'd frozen mid-movement. "Auggie?" She prodded his arm. "What, no sarcastic comeback?"

Auggie's mouth shut with a snap. "Right," he said. "Guess that flying pig I saw this, uh." He stopped again, and Annie frowned.

"Are you OK?" she asked.

"Did she say Beckett?" Auggie was still facing the spot where Joan had been standing.

"I think so. I hope he's not a dragon." Annie looked at her watch. "Well, wish me luck." She paused, but Auggie didn't respond. "Auggie? You OK?"

"What?" said Auggie. "Yeah, no, I'm fine, I just." He visibly shook himself and grinned at her. "I really hate the NSA," he said.

"Remind me to get the story on that later," said Annie. "Assuming I survive Director Beckett."

oOoOo

As it turned out, Director Beckett wasn't really Annie's problem. Well, to be more accurate, Annie's problem wasn't any one person; it was more an unfortunate combination. Of course, that wasn't obvious until after Annie had walked into Joan's office to face the stony stare of a petite black woman in an exquisitely tailored suit. It wasn't obvious, in fact, until said woman had raked Annie up and down with a glare that actually _wouldn't_ have looked out of place on a dragon, and then turned said glare on Joan.

Really, Annie's problem became obvious the moment Joan met the woman's eyes and Annie actually heard the clash of steel on steel.

"Director Louise Beckett, Agent Annie Walker," Joan said, not looking in Annie's direction. Annie wondered if she even could. Maybe the two of them were locked in a staring match from now until one of them died of concentrated resentment.

"Nice to, um." There didn't actually seem to be much point continuing that sentence, Annie decided, since Beckett was already speaking, and not to her, either.

"I'm going to ask you again, how much field experience does your agent have?" she said, and Annie recognised that tone. She wondered if directors in secretive government agencies had to go on a special course. _Kill your enemies with tone of voice and pitch of eyebrow._

"And I'm going to tell you again, my agent's background is classified," Joan said.

"I see. Well, maybe you could just indicate whether her experience can be measured in days or hours. Just so I know how much risk my agent will be taking."

Annie felt her hackles go up, but there was no need for her to defend herself: Joan had already brought out the Raised Eyebrow of Death. It was actually kinda flattering she would break out the big guns just to defend Annie. Problem was, apparently Beckett was immune. They should teach that on the Farm.

"Director Beckett," Joan said, her tone so measured that Annie couldn't help but flinch. "I don't know how things work at the NSA, but we here at the CIA are not in the habit of sending unprepared agents on missons, nor of revealing details of their backgrounds to those without the appropriate security clearance. We prefer to take every precaution to make sure our agents remain alive."

The tense silence that followed that little announcement went on so long Annie thought she was going to pass out, but finally it broke, Beckett turning towards her, apparently either defeated or just satisfied.

"Agent Walker," she said. "I'm told you're offering a tour. I hope it's appropriate for someone with my _security clearance_."

Actually, Annie might have preferred a dragon.

oOoOo

_Tour_ was a nice word. Annie had been a tour guide for two months once in Mongolia, guiding rich Americans looking for an "exotic" experience that didn't actually involve having to deal with the locals. She'd enjoyed it, in a way – seeing the sights, showing off her knowledge, feeling slightly superior. This, though – this felt less like a tour and more like, well, purgatory.

"And what do they do here?" asked Beckett for what felt like the millionth time, peering at a workstation. The operative quickly closed down whatever he was working on, and Annie sighed.

"I'm afraid that's classified," she said, also for what felt like the millionth time.

Beckett gave her an even stare. "I see," she said. "Well, Agent Walker, you're nothing if not consistent."

"Thank you, ma'am." Annie glanced at her watch. So far, the tour had lasted ten minutes. Really? Only ten? Maybe it was actually tomorrow and it had been twenty-four hours and ten minutes.

"And what's over here?" Beckett asked, making a bee-line for Auggie's station. Oh, thank God. If anyone would be able to deal with her, it was Auggie. Annie was saved.

Or she would have been, if Auggie had been there.

"He must be tied up somewhere." Annie said, feeling a little lame. Typical timing, and definitely on purpose.

"Braille keyboard?" Beckett raised an eyebrow.

"The CIA is an equal-opportunity employer," said Annie, and gave her best fake smile. "Would you like to get some coffee?"

Beckett regarded her, expressionless. "The coffee shop isn't classified?"

Annie worked for a real-sounding laugh and led Beckett away. The coffee shop was definitely not classified.

Well, not above security level three, anyway.

oOoOo

"The mission is a simple retrieval," Joan said. "Annie and Agent Duarte of the NSA will pick up the briefcase in Helsinki and return it to us here, where the intel gained will be shared between our agencies."

The snort from the back of the room was quiet, but definitely not quiet enough. Joan turned towards the source. "You have something to add, Auggie?"

"If it's so simple, why does it require two agents?" Auggie's tone was even, but there was something about the way he was standing that was... off. In fact, Annie wasn't sure she'd ever seen him look so... however it was he was looking. "Annie could do this with her eyes closed."

"I see." Joan took a moment to work up a proper glare, even though Auggie couldn't see it. You had to hand it to the woman: she was a professional. "And what would your assessment of the relationship between the CIA and the NSA be?" she asked, and Auggie shrugged.

"Three year olds fighting over the last action figure in the box comes to mind."

"Perhaps you might want to try a metaphor that conveys more respect for your employer," Joan said, and Auggie flashed her a hard smile.

"I call em like I see em," he said, and Joan's eyes narrowed.

"Well, you're right in the sense that previous attempts at co-operation have not always been successful," she said. "Hence the relatively simple mission."

"Then why send Annie?" Auggie's voice was rising, just slightly. "If every time we've tried this before, it's been a disaster, we ought to send someone with more experience."

Ouch. Annie tried out a raised eyebrow of death of her own. Probably a good thing Auggie couldn't see it, since she had the feeling it looked more like she'd just had a stroke.

"That's not up for discussion," Joan said, practically biting the end off the sentence. "This meeting is over. Annie, you'll be leaving in an hour. Auggie, my office, now."

Auggie's face twitched, but Annie was all out of sympathy for him. Well, mostly. Mainly she was just pissed. And confused. Pissed and confused, definitely not worried. Right.

Right.

oOoOo

"Overhear anything good?"

One of the things that was really annoying about Auggie was that he always seemed to be able to find Annie wherever she was, whether it was the women's bathroom, the smoker's courtyard, or standing casually by the door of Joan's office because she just happened to have stopped there to think.

"I wasn't listening," she said. "I was just passing by."

"Right." Auggie tried to take her arm, but she pulled it away.

"Actually, I was waiting for you." Which was true. And if she'd accidentally been eavesdropping at the same time, well, it wasn't like she could turn her ears off, right?

"Really. Waiting for me so you could not walk with me?" Auggie pointedly flipped on his laser cane, and Annie sighed.

"That's not fair. I'm mad at you," she said, linking her arm through his.

"So I've gathered." Auggie kept sweeping the floor with the cane even as she guided him. "It seems to be going around right now."

"Well, you're kind of acting like an asshole," Annie pointed out.

"Hey, don't hold back out of respect for my feelings or anything like that," Auggie said, and Annie rolled her eyes.

"What is your problem with this mission? You can send me out to take down arms dealers and drug smugglers, but a retrieval's too risky?"

"It's not the retrieval I'm worried about," Auggie muttered. And really, that was nothing Annie didn't already know. As mad as she was – and she was definitely mad and not worried at all – she wasn't stupid enough not to notice that Auggie's weirdness had started this morning, with the NSA. Four months, she'd spoken to him almost every day, and it wasn't like she thought she had some deep psychological insight or anything, but she'd never thought that he would be so jumpy about guys who, when all was said and done, were supposed to be on their side.

"Is there something you know that I don't?" she asked, pausing at the door to Auggie's office. "I mean, this agent, Duarte or whatever his name is – you think he's going to get me in trouble?"

Auggie made a noise that could have been a laugh or a cough, or maybe just a weird sigh. "I'm sure Agent Duarte can be trusted to look after puppies, grandmothers, and newbie CIA agents. If anything, you'll be the one getting him in trouble."

"Then what? What's the problem here?"

Auggie made his way back to his desk, settling into his chair and grabbing his headphones. "Hey, get me some licorice in Helsinki, would you?" he said. "They have the salted kind."

Salted licorice. So much for deep, psychological insight. But insight took time, and Annie had a plane to catch.

oOoOo

Helsinki, as it turned out, was not nearly as cold as Annie thought it was going to be. Somehow she'd always missed Scandinavia on her various tours of the world, and she'd had this picture of Finland as a blasted wasteland of blizzards and howling winds, which she had to admit was pretty stupid, given that it was the middle of summer and all. All the same, the bright sunlight and generally sleeveless population was – kind of unexpected.

"I'm at the location," she said, trying not to move her lips too much. Normally she would have staked the place out from a car, but the street was pedestrianised, so she'd had to make do with a pavement cafe. She felt exposed. Kinda ridiculous, given that the guy she was meeting was supposedly on her side, but this whole thing had her on edge.

"Are you inside?" Auggie asked in her ear. "Did you get my licorice yet?"

"No, and no," Annie said, trying to remember that she was still mad. "I'm across the street, and salted licorice sounds disgusting."

"Don't knock it till you've tried it." Auggie sounded normal, and Annie decided maybe it wasn't worth staying angry after all. Maybe the whole weirdness earlier had just been a caffeine deprivation thing.

"Oh, hey," she said. "I think I see him." Black hair, broad-shoulders – from this distance, Annie wouldn't normally have made the call, except that it wasn't like there were a whole lot of Latino-looking men in this town. "He's fifteen minutes early."

"Well, the NSA _does_ lead the community in providing effective intelligence," Auggie said. "Maybe he's just leading by example."

"Are you reading that damn website again?" Annie asked, smiling in spite of herself as she paid her cheque. Being pissed at Auggie was turning out to be a lot harder work than she'd anticipated.

"Where I come from, that's called _doing research_." Auggie sounded like he was smiling, too. "Call me when you've made the retrieval."

"OK," said Annie, narrowly avoiding getting knocked down by a streetcar. Europe. She'd missed Europe, in all its murderous-public-transit glory. But Europe wasn't what she was here for. What she was here for had just entered the bookstore across the street, and so that was where she was going, too.

oOoOo

The Spanish-language section of the store was surprisingly large, given that the nearest relevant country was more than fifteen hundred miles away. Then again, the German-language section was large, too, as were French, Russian, Swedish and English. Oh, Europe.

There was the book. _Cien años de soledad_: Márquez in the original. She reached out, and her fingers touched the spine at the same moment Duarte's did.

"Förlåt," she said, just as he apologised in what she presumed was Finnish, and she turned to find herself staring up into a pair of startlingly pale eyes.

"You speak Spanish?" he said, in English this time, indicating the book.

"For my husband." The code phrase felt slightly sticky in her mouth. "Is this _Love in the Time of Cholera_?"

"No, I'm afraid they don't have it," he said. "But I have a copy I could sell you second-hand, if you don't mind walking me to my car."

"You're too kind," she said, dropping her hand from the book and wondering if anybody overhearing would ever buy these ridiculous coded conversations. Whoever came up with them had definitely been watching too many movies from the forties. And not the good ones, either. What she wouldn't give to be Lauren Bacall for once. Which would make Duarte Bogart, she guessed. Hm. Well, he wouldn't make a bad Bogart, when all was said and done. Apparently, NSA employees were all unfairly good-looking.

"Shall we?" Duarte asked, indicating the door.

Yes, she decided. They certainly should.

oOoOo

Duarte walked fast. That was OK – Annie wasn't not exactly a slouch when it came to striding, especially when she was wearing three-inch heels – but she had this weird feeling like he'd really prefer it if she couldn't keep up.

"Have you been to Helsinki before?" she asked, and Duarte glanced at her, expressionless.

"That's classified," he said.

Right. Apparently _inter-agency co-peration_ didn't extend to small talk.

"I take it you know where we're going?" she said. "Or is that classified, too?"

This time, there was a twitch around Duarte's lips that might have been a proto-smile. Or a grimace. Annie was going with smile, but then, she'd always been a little over-optimistic.

"Not classified," he said, "but probably better not to talk about it openly. We're nearly there."

Annie resisted the urge to roll her eyes and ran her forefinger over the key in her pocket. As if working with an agent who was apparently more robot than human wasn't bad enough, _intel sharing_ apparently meant that everything had to be ten times as complicated as it had any right to be. If it hadn't been for the NSA, Annie could have been on the flight home by now, preferably with a big glass of wine. She was beginning to see why Auggie hated them so much.

"There," Duarte said. The street they were walking down opened out into a busy square, and in the middle was a building that looked more like the Soviet-era public offices that Annie had seen in Russia than anything from a Western country. An art-deco facade supported a copper-green clocktower jutting into the sky like a salute, and a row of huge stone men lined the front clutching globes of light in their granite hands.

"Railway station," said Duarte.

"Right," Annie replied. "Let's go." And this time, she made sure she was the one who was slightly ahead.

oOoOo

"One twenty-four." Annie slid the key into the lock and glanced behind her. Duarte was standing with his back to her, phone to his ear. Watching the crowd, and doing a pretty good job of making it inconspicuous.

"Is it in there?" he said, not looking round.

Annie swung the door open. Yep, there it was, government standard-issue titanium briefcase. Why couldn't they ever get intel in a Prada purse? Not that she would get to keep it afterwards, but Prada was Prada, even just for a few hours.

"Got it," she said, shielding her mouth with her hand. At least titanium was light. A little too light, actually. Like, as if there was nothing in there.

"Shit," she muttered, staring at the case. "It's been tampered with." She turned to scan the crowd, but no-one was moving too fast, no-one was looking their way.

"What?" Duarte's shoulders stiffened.

"Don't look round." Annie ran her fingers along the lock. "We need to regroup somewhere."

"My hotel room. Hotel Kamp, room 204. Ten minutes."

He was gone before she looked round again, and she closed the locker door and pocketed the key. A map on a nearby wall quickly directed her to the Hotel Kamp. Not so quickly, though, that she didn't have time to wonder why the NSA had got their guy a hotel room for a job that was only supposed to take a couple of hours at most. Maybe they just had expense account money burning a hole in their pockets. Or maybe there was something more going on than Annie realised.

Whichever it was, she and Agent Deadpan were going to need to have a serious talk.

oOoOo

"What do you mean, it's empty?"

Auggie's voice down the line was weirdly comforting, even if he did sound at least as disturbed as Annie felt. She shook her head, staring at the briefcase on the bed. The really, really nice bed. Apparently the NSA could stretch to more than an airport Radisson and a stale croissant. Maybe Annie _should_ defect.

"The lock was broken. I have no idea when. The locker was still locked."

"Did anyone follow you?" Auggie asked, the last word coinciding with the door opening. Duarte stood in the doorway, and now he definitely had an expression. And that expression was _pissed_.

"I see you're not really on board with the idea of co-operation," he said.

"I'm on with my technical support," Annie said. "They might be able to help out."

Duarte raised an eyebrow. OK, now she was _sure_ they must teach a course in that.

"We're supposed to be working together, Agent Walker," he said. "Secret phone calls don't fall under that definition."

"It's not _secret_," Annie said, and Duarte shrugged.

"Then you won't mind if I listen in," he said. Annie tried to think of a reason why that was a shitty idea, but nothing was forthcoming. Damn.

"Fine," she said, taking the phone away from her ear and tossing it on the bed. "Auggie, you're on speakerphone."

"That's different," Auggie said, voice a little distorted by the speaker. "Who am I talking to?"

"Agent Kyle Duarte, NSA," Duarte said, stepping forward a little.

There was a pause that was maybe a little longer than it should have been, and Annie wondered again what exactly Auggie's problem with the NSA was. "Auggie Anderson," came Auggie's voice finally, sounding muffled now, like he was talking through thick fabric. Yep, that was high-tech, top-of-the-range technology, all right.

"Nice to meet you," Duarte said. "We have a problem."

"So I've heard." Annie could hear Auggie typing already. "We're looking into it. Anything else you can tell me?"

"Nothing suspicious at the trian station, no tails, no evidence the locker door was forced," Annie said. "Can you get us some information on the nature of the intel?"

"Working on it," Auggie said, "but we have to work on the assumption that the two of you have been compromised. We'll have local agents work on the case. Annie, I'll have a new flight for you in twenty minutes. Kyle, are you able to make your own arrangements to get out of there?"

Duarte nodded. "Not a problem," he said.

"Right. I'll call you back when I know more. Stay put, and don't take any major risks."

"Define _major_," Annie said.

"Oh, I don't know, going back to the railway station, going after whoever took the intel yourself, running with scissors," Auggie said. "The usual."

Annie grinned, aware that Duarte was shooting her a look that could probably be characterised as _disapproving_. "Yes, mom," she said, and hung up.

"What?" she said. "Your tech support doesn't care if you run with scissors?"

At least there was one thing about the CIA that was without a doubt more awesome than anything the NSA had to offer.

oOoOo

Twenty minutes wasn't really a whole lot of time to explore a new city, but Annie figured she could at least check out the cathedral a couple of streets away and maybe try and get hold of some licorice for Auggie. Sure, he'd told her to stay put, but sightseeing didn't count as a _major risk_ in Annie's book. Sitting around in the hotel room with Mr. NSA dwelling on the fact that she wasn't going to get to close the deal on this one, though? That was definitely major. That would end in blood or tears, or maybe both. So, candy and architecture it was.

The licorice turned out to be a little more elusive than she thought, and she was still in the elevator on the way back up to the second floor of the hotel when her phone rang.

"Your flight's leaving at three. Coach via Heathrow," Auggie said.

"Why is it always coach?" Annie said, stepping out of the elevator. "Can't the government afford to fly me business class just this once?"

"Oh, they can afford it," said Auggie. "They just don't want to let you loose on that much free booze." He paused. "Annie? You OK?"

No. Annie was not OK. More importantly, the door to Duarte's room was not OK: it was open, just slightly.

"Something's wrong," she said. "I'll call you back." Auggie's protest was cut off as she snapped the phone closed and reached out, every nerve standing to attention, pushing the door open with the barest brush of her fingertips.

Nothing happened. Annie took a breath and stepped into the doorway, scanning the room fast for assailants and then slowly for information. It was empty. Not only that, it was trashed: the counterpane was on the floor, chairs overturned, lamp smashed. No Duarte, and no briefcase.

Annie pulled her phone out again, dialling Auggie without even looking at what her hands were doing, turning slowly to take in the destruction.

"Duarte's gone," she said.

"Any signs of a struggle?" Auggie asked, all efficiency.

"Oh, yeah," Annie said. "I'd say there were a few."

"Annie, listen to me." Auggie was using his therapist voice, gentle and measured, the one he used when he was worried about her or wanted to get her to do something that was going to suck. "You need to get out of there. You've been compromised. We'll send people to help Agent Duarte, but you still need to get on that plane."

Annie opened her mouth to tell Auggie exactly where he could shove that plane ticket, but what actually came out was something between a grunt and a sigh as something heavy hit her from behind and the really, really nice carpet rushed up to meet her.

* * *

**Author's note:** Hey guys, I'm totally keen to hear your thoughts on this, but I'd really appreciate it if you didn't mention any spoilers for upcoming episodes of Covert Affairs in any comments you might have. Thank you!


	2. Chapter 2

Many thank to everyone who reviewed! It's always a little nerve-wracking starting out in a new fandom, but you guys really made me smile with your kind comments :). Hope you enjoy this chapter!

* * *

**Retrieval**

**Chapter Two**

The first thing Annie became aware of was that she was uncomfortable. Like, _really_ uncomfortable. Sore arms, aching head, bruises everywhere, the works. Of course, that could probably be explained by the fact that (a) her arms were restrained behind her with what felt like handcuffs, (b) she was bouncing around on what she decided was most likely the bed of a truck, and, oh yeah, (c) the last thing she remembered was someone beaning her really hard.

The second thing she noticed was that she couldn't see. She was pretty sure her eyes were open, so that meant blindfold. OK, then, blindfold, handcuffs, truck, blunt-force trauma. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that that added up to kidnapping. Well, this was really turning into a peach of a day.

Annie lay still for a moment, listening. No car sounds, no planes or water or voices, or at least, none loud enough to be heard over the growl of the truck's engine. The jolting – which was starting to upgrade to bouncing – implied a bad road, probably unpaved. No breeze on her face, no light seeping through the blindfold, which implied either it was dark or she was in a space with no windows. Maybe both. There went the plan of trying to throw herself out of the vehicle.

One thing Annie didn't know was whether she was alone. The handcuffs were uncomfortable mainly because of the way they pulled her arms back – they weren't actually too tight. Sure, too tight to pull her hands through, but that assumed that her thumbs weren't dislocated. And OK, right now her thumbs _weren't_ dislocated, but there was no reason that couldn't change. Which would be great, if she was alone, but if she wasn't, she'd've used up one of her escape plans with nothing to show for it. And given that, right now, it was her _only_ escape plan, there might be something to be said for waiting for the right moment.

She shifted, seeing if she could get on her knees, but an extra-large bounce sent her flying. Landing heavily on her breastbone, she sucked in her breath for a moment, wishing she could at least see. She tried rubbing her face against the floor to shift the blindfold, but it was too tight. In fact, the way it pulled at her cheeks when she moved her face made her think it wasn't cloth at all. Duct tape, maybe. Damn, that was going to sting when it came off. She hated the no-eyebrows look.

The truck made a turn, and Annie made another attempt to get upright, this time more successful. The space she was in was high enough for her to be on her knees, but she could feel her head brushing against the ceiling. She was edging sideways to see if she could find a wall when the truck screeched to a stop and she found herself flying forward for the second time in less than ten minutes. Her flight was a short one, though: it ended when her face connected with something solid. Well, at least she'd found the wall.

Doors opened somewhere behind her and Annie lay still. There were voices, now – male and speaking Russian, and she quickly cleared her mind and concentrated on listening.

"Take care," said the first voice. "He says she's dangerous."

Laughter. Another voice. "She looks about as dangerous as my ten-year-old niece."

The first voice again. "Hey, I'm just telling you what he said."

And then hands on her ankles, dragging her backwards. She forced her muscles to remain loose, trying not to wince as the irregularities in the metal floor scraped across her face. Her ankles weren't chained. She could use that.

"Put her in the room with the other one," the first voice said, and then she was being lifted bodily. The second voice – coming from near her ear now – started to say something, but whatever it was was lost in a surprised grunt as Annie drove her knee forwards into soft flesh. She was falling, and then her feet hit the ground and she was running, suddenly aware that she wasn't wearing shoes, every sense screaming at her to _stop_ because she couldn't _see_, but her senses didn't know that there were at least two Russian guys behind her, and she wasn't really in the mood for a sightless sparring match right now.

It might have been a successful strategy if she'd been able to see, or if, for example, her captors just happened to have dropped her off in the middle of a wide open space with an even floor and no obstacles. Neither of those things was true, however, and Annie estimated it was approximately ten seconds between her setting off running and her tripping and landing on her face. Something that felt a lot like pine needles stuck into her cheeks and up her nose, and something that felt a lot like a meaty Russian hand grabbed her by her collar and hauled her up.

"Fucking bitch," said Voice Two, and Annie felt all her breath leave her something hit her hard in the stomach. She aimed a kick, but apparently Voice Two had got smart in the last five minutes, because all she hit was empty air, and then there was something that felt a _lot_ like the barrel of a gun pressed against her temple.

"Bang," said Voice One, in English this time, "you dead."

* * *

Being handcuffed and blindfolded in the back of a moving vehicle had kind of sucked, but Annie was fairly sure that being handcuffed, blindfolded _and_ tied to a chair in an unknown space was at least as bad. At least this time, she was reasonably sure that the handsy Russian guys were gone: she'd heard their voices receding down the corridor. On the other hand, there was also the indisputable fact that she wasn't alone. Whoever it was who was breathing to her left, she hoped like hell they were planning to take this damn blindfold off her soon.

"Who's there?" she said. "What do you want?"

There was a moment's silence, and then Duarte's voice. "Mymble?"

Annie felt herself sag slightly in relief. "Snufkin," she said, and even though she was handcuffed and blindfolded and tied to a chair in an unknown location, she couldn't help the smirk that had been practically permanently welded to her face when she'd found out what Duarte's codename was going to be. "Are you hurt?"

"We can't talk," said Duarte. "They might be listening."

Annie thought about that. "How about now?" she asked, switching to Spanish. "Think they'll be able to find an interpreter on short notice in the middle of the woods?"

"How do you know we're in the woods?" Duarte asked, his Spanish fast and strongly accented. Puerto Rican, Annie decided.

"Just a hunch," she said, twitching her nose to see if she could dislodge the last couple of pine needles. "They bash you on the head, too?"

"Something like that." Duarte shifted slighty, chair creaking. "You hurt?"

"Bumps and bruises. I'll live. Any idea who's behind this?"

A pause. "I'm in the dark on this one."

Huh.

"So you have no idea what the intel could be related to?" Annie said. "I mean, they obviously wanted the briefcase as well as us."

"I told you," Duarte said. "I don't know anything."

"That's interesting. You're a better liar in English than Spanish." Annie heard the slight intake of breath and grinned. Bullseye. Time to follow through. "Funny how you had a hotel room booked even though the mission was only supposed to last a couple of hours. It's almost like you knew something was going to go wrong. And you know what else is funny? An experienced field agent being sent on a job like this. This is the kind of crap only newbies get assigned. Believe me, I know. So let me ask you again, _Snufkin_, what the hell is going on here?"

She took a breath, waiting to see if she'd hit the mark. The pause was longer this time, and for a moment she thought maybe he just wouldn't answer at all. Then there was a sigh.

"I'm not a field agent."

OK, well, _that_ wasn't what she'd been expecting. "You pretty much seem like you're in the field to me," she said.

"I used to be. This is my first mission for... a while." Duarte's voice was resigned, but he was still holding something back, she was sure of it. "I asked to be assigned this one because it was simple and because I'd heard that an acquaintance was going to be in Helsinki."

"An acquaintance?" Annie started, but the sound of the door opening cut her off.

"Well," said a new voice, in English, American, probably California. "I like a telenovela as much as the next guy, but I think that's enough of that."

Footsteps echoed on the floor – concrete, Annie though, and the ceiling was high – and then Annie was fighting back a yell as someone pulled the duct tape from her eyes. She blinked a couple of times, and the figure in front of her came into focus: white male, early to mid-thirties, slight build, red hair, smirk. Man, she hated the smirkers.

"Annie Walker," said the newcomer. "I see government stooges come Barbie-themed these days." The smirk broadened a little, and then he turned to Duarte, tied up maybe six feet from Annie, and ripped his blindfold off, too. "Kyle," he said. "Did you miss me?"

"You know this guy?" Annie said, but Duarte wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the newcomer, if _looking_ was really an appropriate word to describe the full-on nuclear glare he was employing. If looks could kill, Annie was pretty sure most of the solar system would be dust by now.

"Dumont," Duarte said. "I hoped you were dead."

The guy – Dumont – grinned and turned back to Annie. "He's such a kidder, isn't he? After all the years we've known each other." He was all smiles, but there was something about his eyes that made nausea curl in Annie's stomach. Of course, the fact that he'd kidnapped her and tied her to a chair in what looked to be an abandoned factory didn't exactly endear him to her, either.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Oh, I just want to ask you a couple of questions," Dumont said, grabbing a chair and settling on it backwards, facing her. "Like how a nice girl like you ends up doing the government's dirty work."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Annie said. "I work for the Smithsonian."

"Nice try." Dumont got to his feet and wandered over to a nearby workbench, picking up a manila folder and opening it. "Annie Walker," he said. "Field rating for four months. Two commendations. Miss April in this year's _Bright Young Things of the CIA_ fundraising calendar."

"What is that?" Annie asked, schooling her features to reflect confusion and fear – and OK, that last one wasn't too hard. _Where the hell did this guy get her file?_

"What, this?" Dumont looked up "Just a few notes I've compiled. It's amazing the sort of thing you find lying around the internet these days." He looked back at the folder. "Domestic Protection Division. Interesting. Actually, you know what?" He looked up again, snapping the file shut. "I lie. It's not interesting, it's _boring_. They've left out all the good parts." He took a few steps closer and leaned down towards her. "Like how someone like you goes from training to active duty in ten minutes flat. Wanna tell me about that, Agent Walker?"

Annie met him stare for stare. No way she was letting this asshole faze her. "Maybe I'm just really good at what I do," she said.

"Oh, I don't doubt that." Dumont straightened up. "I don't doubt that at _all_." He took a couple of steps back. "What do you say, Kyle? Is Annie really good at what she does?"

"I wouldn't know." Duarte's nostrils were flared with anger, but his voice was even. "I don't work at the Smithsonian."

Dumont grinned. "That's funny. You're a funny guy. You know, for a spook. So tell me, Annie." He turned back towards her. "How does it feel to be owned?"

"Nobody owns me," Annie said, eyes narrowing. Where was this guy going with all this?

"Oh, that's what you think now," Dumont said. "That's what Jake thought to begin with, too. They told you about Jake, didn't they?"

Annie shot Duarte a glance. "Jake?" she said, and Duarte shook his head.

"Jake has nothing to do with this," he said.

"Oh, I beg to differ," Dumont said, not taking his eyes off Annie. "Jake has everything to do with this." He leaned closer again. "I bet they told you he died a hero's death, didn't they? Went down fighting for the country he loved? But that's not what happened. You see, Jake, he was just like you, once. And then one day, he up and killed himself. Just couldn't take it any more." He grinned. "In a few years, that'll be you with a gun in your mouth. Although it'd be a shame to mess up that pretty face. I'd like to take this opportunity to recommend pills." He was leaning right over now, getting up in Annie's face, and man, she would like nothing better than to headbutt this guy right now, but she was pretty sure that would be countr-productive. "Of course," he said, "that assumes you're going to make it out of here alive, which, let me tell you." He shook his head. "Not very likely."

Annie raised her eyebrows. "I have no idea what you're talking about," she said. At this point, it wasn't even a lie any more, but she was definitely more freaked than she was letting on. This guy was crazy, no doubt in her mind, but he knew something about her that she didn't.

"Really." Dumont turned back to Duarte. "Did you hear that, Kyle? She's a better liar than he was, anyway."

"She's not lying," Duarte said. "She has nothing to do with the program."

Dumont paused, watching Duarte's face. "You know, I actually believe you," he said. "Or I believe that that's what you think, anyway. Poor Kyle, driving a desk for four years. I'm surprised they even let you out in the field again after what happened. No wonder you're out of the loop on this one." He shrugged. "It's a shame, really, because if you don't know anything, then I have no real reason to keep you alive." He jerked his head in the direction of the door, and then two huge men – Voice One and Voice Two, Annie guessed – were striding across the room, picking up Duarte chair and all and carrying him away. Dumont followed them, but just before he moved out of Annie's line of sight he turned.

"You, on the other hand," he said, "you can stay. I think you and I are going to have a lot of fun together."

* * *

The thing about dislocating your thumb was that it turned out to be really painful. Like, _really_ painful. And it wasn't that Annie had a problem with pain as such, it was just that she preferred not to be inflicting it on herself. Of course, she also preferred not to be tied up in an abandoned factory with a crazy guy and for her only ally not to be possibly already dead, but apparently she wasn't going to get everything she wanted today.

"Shit," she muttered, and pushed harder against the edge of the chair. It was almost there. It had to be. No way it would hurt this much otherwise.

Then: a crunch and a shift in her bones and Annie swallowed her scream, white flowers of _JesusfuckingChristthathurts_ blooming on the backs of her eyelids. She felt a tear slide down her cheek and gave herself three seconds to pull it together. One. Two. Three.

OK.

Sliding her damaged hand out of the cuff was an exercise in pain management. _Breathe through your nose. Don't make any noise. Live to see tomorrow._ And then it was free, and she bent down to start untying her ankles, careful not to let the handcuffs jangle too much. She should relocate her thumb, but she couldn't face it, not yet. And there was no time – she couldn't see anything that looked like a camera, but it wasn't likely that she would be left unwatched for long.

OK, so, restraints off. Next stop: the door.

It was locked, and Annie quickly discovered that all her personal belongings were gone, including the hair pin she kept in her pocket for emergencies. Whoever this Dumont guy was, he was thorough. But not as smart as he thought he was: the emergency back-up hair-pin sewn into the cuff of her pants leg was still there. That was totally worth pinging the metal detector every time it was feeling particularly sensitive.

The lock was an old one – everything here seemed old, disused and shadowy – and picking it took no more than thirty seconds, which meant approximately ten minutes since they'd left with Duarte. Plenty of time to shoot him in the head, but Dumont seemed like he was the grandstanding kind of guy, so maybe she'd get lucky and find Duarte hanging over a shark tank or something. She slipped out into the corridor and cast around, noting the grime thick on the walls and the exposed pipes overhead. Yeah, this was totally the kind of place that would have a shark tank.

OK. No time to think, just pick a direction. She went left because her left hand was throbbing, and moved as fast as she could while still listening out for guards. No shoes was an advantage this time – no way she could've moved quietly enough in the heels she'd been wearing in Helsinki.

Another corridor. Two doors, both green, metal and heavy-looking. An intersection. Damn, this place was a maze. Annie stopped for a moment to take stock, and then – what was that? Right on the edge of her hearing, something rising and falling like-

Voices.

Annie started moving again, slower this time, tracking the voices through the labyrinth of corridors. Left, right, left again, and then there was a door that was slightly ajar and the hum of the voice resolved itself into words.

"So do we have to worry about Princess CIA?"

Dumont. She flattened herself against the wall and tried to hear the reply, but whoever he was talking to was too quiet, and the next thing she heard was Dumont's voice again.

"Ha, right. But she still thinks you're a government robot. We can use that."

Annie felt her heart start to thump in her ears. It sounded like he was talking to – no, he couldn't be.

"It's not a problem," said Dumont. "I'll just tell her I changed my mind about offing you. She'll be falling over herself with joy, she won't question it."

Jesus. Jesus, he was talking to Duarte.

_Shit_.

Annie swallowed hard and started to edge away. Duarte. God. OK, OK, figure this out. Disused factory in the woods. Population: two meatheads, one crazed nerd who's seen too many James Bond flicks, one highly-trained traitor, and one terrified newbie CIA agent. What did that add up to?

Pretty much to _run like hell_.

* * *

A window, that was what she really needed. Or stairs. Anything that would indicate where in this damn building she was and, more importantly, where the exit was. She was trying to keep track of where she turned and what distinguishing marks she passed, but really, she could've been going in circles and she wouldn't've known for sure. Every corridor seemed to be the same: echoing concrete, exposed pipes, green metal doors. She had a sudden sympathy for lab rats.

And then she found the phone.

Annie was pretty sure she'd never been so glad to see a phone. Even the iPhone that Auggie was always waxing lyrical about was nothing compared to the sweet, sweet sight of this battered, graffitied dinosaur that looked like it had been last used before the Berlin Wall came down. And when she lifted the receiver and there was a dial tone, Annie thought that she might have just encountered proof of the existence of God.

She dialled fast, mentally thanking the instructors at the Farm for drilling it into her to _always memorise important phone numbers_. There was a long pause, and she thought maybe the call wasn't going to go through, her stomach swooping with sick disappointment. And then: a ring. Two. And a voice answering, but not the one she expected.

"Murphy's Bar, how can I help?"

She knew, _knew_ she was supposed to give her code and details of her mission, that it was ridiculous to be so thrown by something so simple, but all she could think to say was "Where's Auggie?"

"Annie? Where are you?" It was one of the other techs, Jim, she recognised his voice, a friendly voice thank _God_, but it wasn't the voice she wanted to hear. Wow, she really needed to pull herself together.

"I don't know exactly. I'm being held in a disused factory in the woods. It might be Finland still, or maybe Russia. Can you trace the call?"

"Already on it." Typing sounded down the line, and Annie bit her lip.

"Where's Auggie?" she said again.

"He called in sick," Jim said. "Can you-" And then there was silence. Annie blinked and took the receiver from her ear, shaking it. Nothing. Not even a dial tone. Apparently miracles were pretty short-lived these days.

Footsteps around the corner brought her back to herself. Time to move. All she could do was hope Jim'd had time to trace the call. If it'd been Auggie, she knew he'd have managed it somehow, but Auggie was off sick. Annie had been kidnapped, and Auggie had gone home sick. It wasn't fair, she knew – it wasn't like Auggie was a slacker, if he'd called in sick he must be practically at death's door – but she couldn't help thinking that if it had been the other way round, no way she would have left him out there alone.

Alone. Duarte was a double agent, Auggie wasn't at the other end of the phone, and all Annie could rely on was herself.

She made a left turn and stopped. There were footsteps ahead now as well as behind. Shit. OK, well, there were four doors ahead of her. Time to see what was behind door number one.

As it turned out, though, door number one was locked, as were two and three. Annie grabbed the handle of the last door, wondering if there was time for lock-picking before one or other of the approaching sets of footsteps arrived on the scene, and then the handle turned and the door swung outwards. Annie slipped inside and closed it behind her as quietly as possible.

The room she was in was cavernous and dimly-lit, crowded with huge machinery that bristled in weird silhouettes against the grime-covered windows set high up in one wall. It must have been part of the factory floor once upon a time. Plenty of places to hide. Good. The question was, was there a way to get up to the windows?

Annie moved forward, the moulded metal of the gantry sharp on her bare feet. It looked like this place had once had something to do with manufacturing paper. That didn't really narrow the region down, but information was information.

She was halfway into the room when a hissing noise behind her had her whirling. Smoke or steam was pouring out of a vent somewhere in amongst the machinery, and it was coming fast – in a few seconds, almost the whole top half of the room was hung with clouds of vapour. Annie coughed, and – oh, shit, that wasn't steam. Steam didn't burn your nasal passages when you breathed it in. Jesus.

Annie began to run back to the door, bending as low as she could to keep her face in the relatively breathable air near the floor. She ran through a list of all the poisonous gases she could think of as she ran, but really, the information wasn't a whole lot of use – whichever one it was, it was going to be a serious problem for her if she didn't get out of here _soon_.

Covering her mouth and nose with one arm, she reached out with the other to haul on the door handle, only to find that there wasn't one. The door was completely smooth on the inside, no handle, no lock, nothing to grab onto. She pushed on it frantically, but it didn't budge. The air was getting hazy now, and Annie wasn't sure if it was the smoke or if she was close to passing out. And that was when she spotted the keypad beside the door.

It was completely out of place, and if she hadn't been so focussed on the door itself, she would've noticed it immediately: a numerical keypad with an LCD display, like the ones on every door at the CIA. It was the most high-tech thing she'd seen since she woke up in the back of a truck miles from anywhere, but she didn't have time to wonder what the hell it was doing there right now. She knew the chances of getting through without the appropriate swipe card or code were slim to non-existent, but the chances of surviving if she didn't were looking even worse, so she reached out and tapped out the first number she could think of.

The number flashed on the LCD, the faded. The door remained closed. Annie groaned in frustration and tried another code, and another, typing deperately on the pad. Number after number flashed and disappeared, until the keys were too blurry for Annie to read. Some time after that, she became aware that she couldn't reach the keypad any more, and it took her a few moments to understand that that was because she was one her knees. She struggled back to her feet, only to find herself on the ground, throat burning, eyes welling with tears.

_I wonder what they'll tell Danielle_, she thought, and closed her eyes.

* * *

If Annie thought she'd felt sore when she'd come to in the truck, it was nothing compared to how she felt when she woke up this time around. Every inch of her skin felt tender, like someone had rubbed a cheese grater all over her body. Her left hand felt like it had swollen to twice its normal size. Her throat ached so badly she could barely swallow. It took her three tries to unstick her eyelids, and when she finally managed it, she almost wished she hadn't bothered.

"Morning, sleepyhead," said Dumont, smirking face inches from hers. "I guess beauty sleep really is a misnomer."

She stared at him, thoughts moving sluggishly. She wasn't dead. That was really as far as she could manage right now. That, and that she really wanted to punch Dumont in his smug face.

"It's interesting," Dumont said. "You did pretty well, escaping and evading the guards, but you let yourself get caught again. Why is that?"

Annie blinked at him. It wasn't like getting caught again had been her intention.

"I mean," Dumont continued, "obviously I would've caught you eventually. I was the one who arranged for your escape, after all. I just wonder why you didn't use some of your... special talents. It seems a shame to waste them."

Annie started to take in details of her location. She was tied to a chair (again), and from the dinginess and general ugly green theme, she was guessing she was still somewhere in the factory. Everything else, however, was different. She was inside some kind of purpose-built chamber within the larger room. The walls were dark and heavy-looking, and there was the hum of electricity.

"It's an electromagnet," Dumont said. "A really, really big electromagnet." He cocked his head on one side, like he was waiting for a reaction.

Annie finally managed to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth. "Is that supposed to scare me?" she asked, wishing her voice didn't sound quite so much like she'd been chain-smoking constantly for the last fifty years.

Dumont raised his eyebrows. "You know, I did think the whole bimbo look was a front, but I'm beginning to think you really are just really dumb," he said, then shrugged. "I have to say, Jake was a lot more fun than you are."

"Sorry to disappoint." Annie tried surreptitiously testing the strength of the ropes. He left hand throbbed in protest.

"Whatever," Dumont said, stepping out of the chamber. "I'd say it was nice knowing you, but that would be a lie." Grinning at her, he flipped a switch on the wall, and the hum of electricity kicked up several notches.

Annie waited. Nothing else happened. Dumont's grin faded.

"It's not working," he said. "You've found a way to shield them, is that it?"

"I can't believe I have to say this again," Annie said, "but I have no idea what you're talking about."

Dumont's eyes narrowed, and he flipped the switch off again, the hum fading. He stepped forward, back into the chamber, leaning over and glaring into Annie's eyes.

"I was hoping to avoid tearing you limb from limb," he said. "It's so... messy. But if I have to, I will."

Annie didn't have the energy to reply. It was all she could do to keep herself from passing out again.

"You two," Dumont said. "Take her back to the holding cell. And then find me some brighter lights. We'll need them for the surgery."

Annie had the sense of being lifted, and then she lost her struggle to retain her grip on consciousness.

* * *

It was a soft clanking noise that woke Annie this time. She still felt like she'd been bathing in sand, but her vision was less blurry this time, and her mind was noticeably more alert. She really wished she'd stopped to pop her thumb back in however many hours ago it was, but on the other hand, the pain was giving her an edge of urgency. Which wasn't exactly necessary, given that she was pretty sure Dumont was planning to perform some kind of operation on her for reasons unknown, which really ought to be all the urgency anyone could ever need, but every little helps.

The clanking came again, and she realised it was someone at the door. She was back in the first room she'd been in, where she'd first met Dumont. How long had she been out? Was he already prepared for the surgery? She steeled herself as the door started to swing open, opening her mouth to make a crack about electromagnets. The words never made it past her lips, though, because as it turned out, it wasn't Dumont at the door at all.

It was Auggie.

* * *

Guys, just a reminder: please don't mention any spoilers for any unaired episodes of the show. Thank you!


	3. Chapter 3

Thanks for all the lovely comments on the last chapter, guys! I'm particularly excited about the people who've started watching Jake 2.0 because of this story. Victory arms! There are no spoilers for specific episodes of Jake in this chapter, so MyGoldenGlow, you can relax ;). Hope you guys enjoy this one!

* * *

**Retrieval**

**Chapter Three**

Annie felt her mouth drop open, and she wasn't sure she would've been able to speak even if it hadn't been likely to give Auggie away; as it was, Auggie put a finger to his lips and slipped inside the room, closing the door with the slightest of clanks and then standing just inside it, head cocked on one side like he was listening. Annie wanted to ask him what he was doing, she wanted to ask him about the dried blood encrusted under his nose, she wanted to ask him _how__ the hell he'd got there_, but Auggie was still motioning for quiet, and she forced herself to sit still and silent for a long, long moment.

"OK," said Auggie finally, speaking half in a whisper. "I think we're good now. Where are you?"

"I'm here," Annie said, the words still rough from her encounter with the gas. "Auggie, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Saving your ass." Auggie took three paces forward and reached out, dropping a hand onto the top of her head and another onto her shoulder. "I _was_ waiting for an engraved invitation, but I figured Miss Manners would let it slide this once. Handcuffs?"

"Rope," Annie said, her wrists already tensing in anticipation.

"Good." Auggie said. "I hate picking locks." He crouched, pulling a penknife out of his back pocket, and ran a hand down her left arm to wear the thick bundle of rope was cutting off the circulation in her hand. She stifled a gasp as his fingers brushed her swollen thumb.

"Dislocated?" Auggie said. "I thought you said no handcuffs?"

"Not any more." Annie braced herself for more pain, but somehow Auggie managed to saw through the rope without the barest brush against her thumb. The right wrist was even faster, and then he handed her the knife.

"You OK to get your ankles?"

"Yeah." Annie leaned down and started on the ropes – wow, the knife was damn sharp – but something about the way Auggie was still crouched in front of her with this _intensity_ in his face made her pause. "What is it?" she said.

"Stand up," Auggie said, and Annie did, the last of the ropes falling away. Auggie stood too, hands hovering just above her shoulders and then moving, down her arms, across her chest, over her hips, always half an inch or so away from making contact.

"Auggie?" she whispered. If it had been any other guy, she'd've felt a little creeped out, but as it was, it was just, it was just – _unsettling_.

"Turn around," Auggie said, and she did, feeling prickles in her skin as the barely-tangible warmth of Auggie's hovering hands moved across her back.

And then.

"Give me the knife," he said, and she handed it over without a moment's thought. "This is going to sting a little," Auggie said, and then there was the slithering sound of silk ripping – and she couldn't help feel a momentary twinge for her blouse, even though after everything it had been through since she'd been kidnapped, it didn't really deserve the name _blouse_ any more – and a cold pinch against her shoulder blade that turned into a rush of heat and pain and the feeling of blood sliding down her back.

"What are you doing?" she asked, and for just a moment, she thought about how someone had compromised the operation in Helsinki and how she had no idea how Auggie had known how to find her and how he was standing behind her now with a knife she had handed over to him, and she remembered what one of the instructors on the Farm had once taught her: _in the end, the only person you can truly trust is yourself. And sometimes, not even that._

And then Auggie took her by the shoulders and spun her back round, holding out his hand palm-up. A tiny, metallic object lay in a pool of blood in the centre of his palm.

"Tracker," he said, and laid it carefully on the seat of the chair.

Annie felt her mouth drop open. "How-" she started, but Auggie interrupted her.

"Annie," he said. "I promise I will tell you all about it, but not right now, OK?"

Annie stared at the tracker. It was small enough that she could almost have dismissed it as a speck of dirt. "You know," she said, "you could at least buy a girl a drink before cutting foreign objects out of her skin."

The corners of Auggie's mouth twitched, and he dug into his pocket. "Here," he said, holding out a hip flask.

Annie unscrewed the top and sniffed. "Tequila?" she said. "Wow. You're one classy guy."

"Hey," Auggie said. "Daring rescues, minor surgery and mid-range Mexican firewater – don't tell me I don't treat you like a princess." Annie shook her head and took a pull of the tequila, coughing a little as it burned her already-raw throat. She was feeling more together every moment, but Auggie's face had turned serious.

"Where's Kyle?" he said.

"Kyle?" What with the electromagnet and the gas and the threat of surgery, Annie had almost forgotten about Duarte. "I don't know."

"Where was the last place you saw him?" Auggie asked, wiping the bloody knife on his pants and folding it up.

"Auggie," Annie said, "Duarte's working for them."

"What? No, he isn't." Auggie sounded weirdly firm, given that he'd only just got there, but Annie didn't have time to worry about that right now.

"Yes, he is," she said. Auggie was turning away, toward the door, but Annie stepped forward and grabbed his wrist. "I overheard him talking to Dumont. He's a double agent."

"Really," Auggie said. "And did Dumont know you were listening?"

"Of course n-" Annie had a sudden flash of the last time she'd spoken to Dumont. _I was the one who arranged for your escape_, that's what he'd said. But that was ridiculous. "Listen, I'm telling you, he's dirty. We have to get out of here."

"Annie." Auggie turned back to face her, gripping her upper arms and ducking his head so it was like he was looking into her face. "There are two trucks outside the main entrance, but they're guarded. There's a vehicle hidden in the woods about a click and a half from the main entrance, bearing sixty degrees magnetic. Here." He dug in his pocket and held out a set of keys.

"What?" Annie said. "What are you talking about?"

"You can leave if you want. Maybe you even should. But I'm not going anywhere without Kyle." Auggie fumbled for her hand and pressed the keys into them. "OK?"

Annie stared down at the keys in her hand. Auggie was already turning away. "No," she said. "No, Jesus, it's not OK! I mean, how are you even going to find him?"

Auggie turned back toward her and grinned. "I found you, didn't I?" he said.

* * *

The sense of deja vu as Annie slipped out of the room she was coming to think of as a cell was momentarily disorienting. There she was again, no shoes, hand throbbing, every sense straining to pick up any sign of danger, sliding down the empty, silent corridor. But this time, Auggie was in front of her, moving slowly but purposefully, one hand pressed to the wall. It ought to have freaked her out, made her even more tense – now she was responsible for Auggie's safety as well as her own, and he wasn't a field agent, wasn't even supposed to be here, didn't even have his cane – but somehow, the swish of his sneakers on the concrete made her feel just a little safer.

When they hit the first intersection, Auggie paused for a second, like he was listening to something she couldn't hear. At first, she thought he'd picked up the sound of someone coming, but there was no extra urgency in his movements as he turned left. It was like somehow he knew exactly where to go, and actually, Annie _was_ starting to get kind of freaked out now. She wanted to ask him where he was going, how he was choosing his route, how he'd known where to find her in the first place. In fact, there weren't many questions in existence that she _didn't_ want to ask Auggie right now. But they were in hostile territory with no idea how close the enemy was, and talking was going to have to wait.

Every intersection was the same deal: Auggie would pause, listen, and then make a decisive turn. Only one time did Annie hear anything apart from their own soft footsteps: the rumble of voices, a long way off, but apparently close enough to make Auggie decide to retrace their steps a short distance. The voices faded, and they kept moving. Annie started to feel like she was in a dreamworld, nothing but peeling paint and green doors and the whispering of Auggie's shoes.

And then Auggie stopped. The door he stopped outside was the same as every door they'd passed, as far as Annie could see, but Auggie stopped there for a long moment, so long that she was almost ready to risk speaking to ask him what the problem was. Then he slid the palm of one hand down the door, and produced lock-picking tools from his pocket with the other.

This room. Annie had no idea why, but it was becoming glaringly clear that Auggie had talents she knew nothing about. In particular, he seemed to be psychic. It wasn't that Annie hadn't liked _the X-Files_, but when she boarded the plane for Helsinki, she really hadn't expected to walk into an episode. Still, there were worse things in life to aspire to than Dana Scully.

Annie hip-checked Auggie gently, and he moved aside, raising his eyebrows in her general direction. She answered his silent question by taking the lock-picking tools from his hand. Auggie hated lock-picking, and to be honest, Annie was starting to feel kinda useless.

Auggie's lips twitched into a half-smile. _Thanks_, he mouthed, and Annie grinned back and pressed his hand, then sank into a crouch. Time to do what she did best: break something.

* * *

The room behind the door Auggie picked was almost identical to the one Annie had been held in: dim light, high ceiling, no windows or furniture except a battered metal chair with a man tied to it. Duarte. He was facing the door, head hanging, duct-tape across his mouth and dried blood smeared across his temple, and even though Annie had heard his conversation with Dumont, she had to admit that his impression of a kidnapping victim was pretty damn convincing.

Duarte raised his head sluggishly at the sound of Annie's feet on the concrete. He blinked at her, and then his eyes went behind her to Auggie and widened until she thought for a second they would fall out of the sockets. Annie started forward, but Auggie's hand on her shoulder pulled her up short, and she turned back to see he'd laid his finger on his lips and was listening, like he had when he'd first appeared in her own cell. To be honest, the whole routine was pretty weird, but since it most definitely wasn't the weirdest thing that Auggie had done in the past twenty minutes, Annie was willing to let it slide. Well, at least for now. As soon as they were somewhere safer, she was totally going Dana Scully on his ass.

After a couple of seconds, Auggie nodded. "Clear," he said, and produced his knife again. "Kyle's here?"

"He's here." Annie grabbed the knife and started on Duarte's bonds. He was still blinking at Auggie, eyes bulging, and as soon as she'd freed one hand, he reached up and ripped off the duct tape.

"Jake," he said. "_How_-" He seemed not to know how to finish the sentence, mouth opening and closing

Annie frowned and glanced back at Auggie. _Jake?_

As far as she could tell, though, Auggie wasn't weirded out by the name at all. "Kyle, listen, we have to get out of here," he said. "I'll explain later, I promise."

"But-" Duarte was struggling to his feet, swaying. Annie wondered how bad that head injury was.

"I _promise_," said Auggie, and took a few paces forward. "Can you walk?"

"Yeah, I. Yeah." Duarte was still staring at Auggie, his face pale, eyes stretched. To be honest, Annie wasn't really convinced about the _walking_ part, but she wasn't really sold on the idea of having to carry Duarte out of there, either, so she kept her mouth shut.

"OK, one more thing," Auggie said, and raised his hands, ghosting them over Duarte like he'd done to Annie earlier. He was fast, efficient, and Annie wondered if she'd just imagined how slow the same process had been when it was her being felt up. Not that _felt up_ was the right phrase. Um. Anyway, the point was, Auggie found and removed another tracker in what felt like seconds, and Duarte barely even flinched, allowing himself to be prodded and manipulated like a doll, and just staring at Auggie the whole time. It was actually kinda creepy. Annie remembered that Duarte could be a double agent (and she wouldn't even have added the _could be_ if Auggie hadn't seemed so damn sure), and made a mental note to keep herself between him and Auggie at all times. She wasn't sure how much it would help if she ended up with a knife in the back five minutes earlier than Auggie did, but no-one ever said being a spy had to make sense.

"All right," Auggie said, laying the tracker on the chair. "Much as I love hanging round creepy abandoned buildings waiting to be jumped, I think it's about time we blew this pop stand."

* * *

"South," said Auggie, voice barely above a whisper, and pressed an object into Annie's hand. She looked down: a compass.

"There's a side entrance in the south wall," Auggie said. "It's how I got in. This place is a maze, but as far as I can tell there's hardly any dead ends, so if we just keep heading as directly south as possible, we ought to be able to find it."

"Got it." Annie took a reading and turned left

"OK." Auggie slung his arm round Duarte's shoulders. "Help me out here, Kyle, I need you to show me where to go. One foot in front of the other, follow Annie, OK?"

Duarte nodded, still seeming dazed, and they moved off. Glancing back, Annie wasn't sure whether Duarte was leading Auggie or Auggie was supporting Duarte. In the end, she figured it didn't matter as long as they got the hell out of this place. She felt like she'd spent days doing nothing but sneaking up and down these corridors, with occasional breaks to be tied up or knocked out by poison gas or gloated at by a crazy person. Really, she'd expected better than this from Scandinavia.

She turned left again at the next intersection, checking behind her to make sure Auggie and Duarte were following OK, and then hung a right, two more lefts, and then – dead end. The corridor they'd come to ran east and west, and turned north at both ends. The south wall was bare except for a single door. It looked pretty much like all the rest of the doors in this godforsaken place – and she found herself wondering just how much ugly green paint they'd used up here – except that there was a barely-detectable wire leading from the top of the doorframe up into the tangle of exposed pipes on the ceiling.

"There's no more south," she whispered, and Auggie and Duarte stood still. "Just a door."

"That's where we're going," Auggie said. "I left it unlocked."

"There's an alarm." Annie eyed it, wondering what would happen if she cut the wire.

"Not a problem," Auggie said. "I disabled it when I came in."

"Are you sure?" It wasn't that Annie didn't trust Auggie, it was just that that wire was definitely intact, and Annie couldn't see any other way of disabling the alarm. There was no keypad, no obvious electronics, nothing to be tampered with.

"I'm sure," Auggie said. "Let's go."

Annie took a deep breath and turned the handle, tensing herself to run. The door swung open with a low creak, but nothing else happened: if they had tripped the alarm, it was a silent one. And outside – outside was _outside_, sky and ground and trees, and Annie had never thought a scrubby pine forest on a drizzly day could look so much like paradise.

"Let's go," she whispered, and stepped out into the open air.

* * *

"I think I've found it," Annie said, eyeing the huge pile of greenery.

"What makes you so sure?" Auggie stopped a few steps behind her, one arm still round Duarte's shoulders.

"Well, there just... aren't too many car-sized lumps covered with tree branches in this forest," Annie said, looking around at the flat, monotonous terrain that stretched out in all directions from what was really obviously a hidden vehicle. "I mean, it might even have been _less_ conspicuous if you hadn't tried to hide it." And how _had_ he hidden it, anyway? More importantly, how had he driven it there in the first place?

Auggie made a face. "I'm hurt you don't appreciate my artistry," he said. "It took me forever to collect all those branches."

"Yeah, well, let's hope it doesn't take forever to clear them away again." Annie grabbed a branch and tossed it behind her. "Hey, you know, this is a really shiny car," she said. "Where'd you get it?"

"I borrowed it," Auggie said, stepping forward and hauling on some greenery. "I needed one that was almost completely computer controlled."

Annie paused in the act of hurling a branch. "Why?" she asked, and she didn't miss the look Duarte threw Auggie, even if Auggie did.

"I'll tell you later," Auggie said.

"No, you know what?" Annie dropped the branch she was holding and turned to face Auggie. "Why don't you tell me now? Because I'm getting kind of sick of this cloak-and-dagger crap. How am I supposed to be effective in the field if I have no idea what information you're working from or how you're getting it?"

"Jake." Duarte had stopped clearing, as well, and was stepping forward, but Auggie shrugged off his hand.

"I'll handle this, Kyle," he said.

"And that's another thing," Annie said, and she was aware her voice was rising, but didn't seem to be able to stop it. "You two know each other? Auggie, why didn't you tell me back at Langley? And what's with the _Jake_ business?"

"Annie," Auggie started, but then he stopped, lifting his head. "Shit," he said. "They've noticed you're gone."

"How do you know?" Annie asked.

"I can hear them." Auggie was dragging the last of the branches off the car, movements hurried. "Annie, you have the keys. Let's go."

Annie knew it was ridiculous, but she was half-ready to stay there and argue some more. She wanted answers almost more than she wanted to breathe. And then again, the problem there was that if she wasn't careful, breathing wasn't something any of them were going to be doing for much longer. _Dammit_. She took a couple of deep breaths and unlocked the driver's side door, sliding into the seat and trying to let the anger drain away. There would be time for that later. Assuming they lived that long.

Auggie was in shotgun, back straight, face tense. "They're coming this way," he said. "Drive. Try and throw them off."

Annie filed away the _how do you know that?_ into the file in her brain marked _questions for later_ – and hoo boy, that thing was getting _big_ – and stepped on the gas, weaving between the trees. The car was one of those tiny European smart things designed to be able to park inside a matchbox. As it turned out, that meant it was awesome for fitting through small gaps between pine trees, too. In fact, maybe that was the original point and the whole parking thing was just a by-product. How many car-chases were there in European forests, anyway? Maybe it was some kind of regional sport.

"They're still following us," Auggie said, breaking in on her thoughts. "Dammit, there must be another tracker."

"Can you find it?" Annie swerved, narrowly avoiding ripping the right wing-mirror off.

"No time. Hang on." Auggie leaned forward, gripping the dash. Annie thought about asking what he was doing, but she was actually beginning to hate that question.

"What are you doing?" Duarte said from the back seat, grabbing the head rest as Annie took a particularly sharp turn.

"I'm converting the GPS so that it sends positional data to the satellite on the same frequency as the trackers Dumont was using," Auggie said, fingers tense on the dash. "It's strong enough that it should drown out the other signal."

"So they'll track the car instead of us?" Annie said.

"That's the idea," said Auggie.

"Can you send a signal to the NSA to let them know where we are?" Duarte asked, but Auggie shook his head.

"Tried earlier," he said. "Dumont's jamming all the satellites in the area so they only send signals to him. Hell, maybe he just _owns_ all the satellites in the area." He sounded uncharacteristically frayed, and Annie glanced over to see that blood was oozing from his nose down over his lips and chin.

"Jesus, Auggie," she said. "You're bleeding."

"Hey, is there anything small and heavy in here? Like a brick or something?" Auggie said, ignoring Annie's concern. He swiped at the blood flowing down his face, succeeding only in smearing it across his cheek.

"Here, this was under the seat." Duarte leaned forward, handing Auggie a clear glass bottle full of colourless liquid. There was no label, and Auggie twisted off the cap and sniffed it.

"Home-brewed vodka," he said. "What a waste." He handed it to Annie. "I need you to find a long, straight run and then wedge this on the gas pedal," he said. "There's a disused mine about three clicks from here, bearing ninety-six degrees. If we can get underground before they find the car and shut the GPS off, there's a good chance they won't be able to track us."

"We're going to jump?" Annie asked, and Auggie nodded.

"Kyle, you OK to do this?" he said.

"Don't worry about me." Duarte was sitting up in back, looking generally more compos mentis. "I'll be fine."

"Good. Let me know when we're ready to go." Auggie waited and Annie shook her head, keeping an eye ahead for anywhere the car could run for a while without crashing into a tree.

"Auggie, how did you reprogram the car without even opening the dash?" she asked.

Auggie sighed. "My body is infused with thousands of microscopic robots that allow me to interface with computers using only the power of my mind," he said.

Annie turned to stare at him. "What?" she said.

"Yeah," said Auggie. "I didn't think you would buy that." He shook his head. "Ready to go?"

They were coming up to some kind of track – maybe a logging road – and the stretch right up ahead was pretty straight. Annie aimed the car and reached down, wedging the vodka bottle on the pedal. "OK," she said and opened the door. "Let's go."

She hit the ground shoulder-first, tucking her head and arms in and rolling. Something hard dug into her back, and then she was rolling to her feet and checking the area. Duarte was a few feet away, already moving. Auggie was behind her, on his feet but swaying a little. He was still bleeding, she noticed, but there wasn't time to worry about that now.

"Auggie," she called, and he turned and moved in the direction of her voice. She met him halfway.

"Annie," he said, "if they find the car before we find the mine, we're sunk. We're going to have to run."

She heard the request in his voice and nodded, taking his hand. "Then let's run," she said.

* * *

The entrance to the mine was grim and uninviting, half-blocked by rocks and ineffectively fenced off with rusting chicken wire. A few scraps of paper hung damply from the fence, the edges of faded Cyrillic letters still just visible. Annie shivered and threaded her way around the fence and past the fallen boulders, tugging Auggie behind her.

"Careful," she said. "The ground's pretty uneven."

"Smells like my college dorm the day after finals are done," Auggie said, picking his way through the rubble behind her.

"I don't think anyone's done any partying here for a while," Annie said.

"It's lucky I brought that tequila, then," Auggie said. "I haven't been to a decent mine party in years."

"Nice." Annie glanced back at him, noting the strained look on his face. His nose had stopped bleeding now, but his face was pale enough that the dried blood on his lips and chin looked almost black. "You really know how to show a girl a good time."

"Guys," Duarte called from up ahead. "Can we stop with the banter and get underground?"

Auggie grinned. "Yes, sir!" he called, saluting. "Can't fight the banter," he muttered under his breath.

The entrance led to a long passageway that sloped gently downwards, tall enough to stand upright, but not wide enough for two to walk abreast. The walls ran with moisture, and the floor was slimy under Annie's bare feet. She actually kinda thought she preferred _abandoned factory_ to _abandoned mine_. Or she would've done, if it hadn't been for the whole poison gas-electromagnet-crazed killer thing, anyway.

"How deep do you think we need to go before the tracker's scrambled?" Duarte asked from up ahead.

"We should at least get out of the entranceway," Annie said. "If they figure out we've come to the mine, we'll be sitting ducks here." She stopped moving. "Um, Auggie, I'm not sure I'm really going to be much of a guide any more."

"Here." Auggie held something out to her, and she took it. A flashlight.

"What'd you bring this for?" she asked, flipping it on.

"I like to shine it in the eyes of the people I interrogate," Auggie said. Annie grinned, but then she thought a little harder about it and felt the grin fade. It had sounded like a joke, sure, but then again, Auggie had found out where she was being held _somehow_, and if there was one thing today had taught her – apart from that she should always take the opportunity to buy salted licorice when it was offered because who knew when you were going to get thrown in a truck and driven to the middle of nowhere – it was that there was a hell of a lot going on with Auggie that she didn't know about. Still, on the plus side, maybe this was the deep psychological insight she'd been looking for earlier. Shame it took hiding out from bad guys in a freezing, stinking mine to bring it, but no pain, no gain, right?

Right.

* * *

"OK, I think we're good," Duarte said. They'd been walking for about twenty minutes, and there was no light at all now, apart from the pale glow of the flashlight. Annie wasn't sure how far underground they were, but they'd been heading steadily downwards the whole time, and she was willing to bet the weight of rock over their heads was plenty enough to block out whatever signal the mysterious tracker might be sending out. More importantly, if they were stopping, that meant it was time for answers. _Finally_.

"OK, mister," she said, turning to Auggie and shining the flashlight in his face – not that it did much good, but it made her feel better – "you've got some explaining to do."

Auggie was leaning against the wall, shoulders sagging like half the bones had been removed from his body. He looked bad enough that she was almost tempted to let answers slide for now. Almost.

"OK, OK," he said, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Annie Walker, meet Jake Foley, former NSA agent and government lab rat, now deceased." He leaned toward her a little. "That'd be me."

"What-" Annie started, but Auggie wasn't finished. "Kyle Duarte," he said, "meet Auggie Anderson, current head of TechOps in the Domestic Protection Division of the CIA. Also me."

"I don't-" Duarte said, but Auggie waved a hand.

"Good, well, now the introductions are over," he said, sliding down the wall, "I hope no-one will object if I pass out."

* * *

Guys, I apologise for the lack of proper explanations in this chapter. They were supposed to be in here, but the escape ended up taking up a lot more verbiage than I thought it would. I'm getting there, I promise!

As usual, if you could avoid mentioning anything about unaired episodes in your comments, that would be awesome. Thank you!


	4. Chapter 4

Thank you once again for all the kind comments, you guys! And for not pelting me with rocks for the lack of explanations ;). This chapter is less action, more sitting around in a mine talking. Which is mostly my favourite genre of talking. Hope you enjoy!

One note – there are specific spoilers in here for Jake 2.0 1x13 and 1x14.

* * *

**Retrieval**

**Chapter Four**

Annie jumped forward, grabbing Auggie under the arms as he slumped, the movement sending a spike of pain through her injured hand. Auggie's head lolled onto her shoulder, and Annie found herself in an awkward hug, Auggie's unconscious weight falling forward onto her, making her stumble backwards a couple steps. It really would've helped if he hadn't been so tall. Or if she'd still had the three-inch heels she'd been wearing in Helsinki. Man, she was going to miss those shoes.

"Let me help you." Duarte was suddenly there, taking some of Auggie's weight and lowering him to the ground. Annie pressed her fingers to the side of his neck. His skin was a little too warm and slick with sweat, his pulse slightly fast, but he was breathing, and that was something.

"Damn," she said.

"What's wrong with him?" Duarte asked, crouching beside her.

"He's sick." Annie remembered Jim's voice down the phone. "He's supposed to be off sick."

"He's supposed to be _dead_," Duarte muttered, reaching out a hand to touch Auggie's forehead, and Annie felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, batting his hand away before he could touch Auggie and turning the flashlight on his face.

"Hey." Duarte rose to his feet, shielding his eyes. "Point that thing somewhere else, would you?"

Annie rose too, keeping the light trained on Duarte's face. "Hey, you know what, Duarte? Auggie may trust you, but he didn't hear you talking to Dumont." She took a step forward and Duarte stepped back. "I don't know what your game is here, but I swear to God, if you touch him, I will _end_ you."

"Jesus." Duarte shook his head, edging backward again as Annie moved forward until she was between him and Auggie. "Come on, Annie, I have no idea what you think you heard, but there is no way I would hurt Jake."

"His name is _Auggie_." Annie had the irrational urge to punch Duarte in the face. Or, well, maybe it wasn't so irrational.

"Whatever his _name_ is, he's my friend," Duarte said. "With Dumont out there, you're really gonna try and paint _me_ as the bad guy?"

"You just said he ought to be dead," Annie pointed out, wondering how quickly she could get to the knife that she knew was in Auggie's pocket.

"Oh, come-" Duarte seemed to run out of words, and his mouth moved silently for a moment before he started speaking again. "Christ, he _is_ dead. Jake – I mean, Jake Foley's been dead for almost five years. I went to his funeral, for God's sake."

Annie swallowed. Oh. OK, well, just because she'd misconstrued what Duarte said didn't mean he wasn't an untrustworthy son of a bitch. And – hey, wait a minute. "Wait," she said, memories connecting to each other in her brain. "Jake, as in – what, the Jake you and Dumont were talking about earlier? The one who killed himself?"

Duarte's face twitched. "Yeah, that Jake." He looked away, like he was trying to hide something.

Annie shook her head. "Auggie would never do that."

"Really." Duarte raised his eyebrows. "Well, I think if we've learned anything today, it's that you don't know _Auggie_" – he made air quotes around the name, and Annie bristled – "as well as you think you do."

"Hey, sure, he only faked suicide to get away from you and the NSA," Annie said. "Sounds like you were the best of friends."

Duarte's head snapped up, eyes furious in the glow of the flashlight. "You have no idea what you're talking about," he said, and Annie felt like she might scream.

"Well, maybe that's because no-one will _tell me_," she said – OK, so maybe it was more like a yell – and if she didn't hurl the flashlight at the wall in frustration, it was only because she the only thing she wanted less right now than to be stuck in a mine with Duarte was to be stuck in a mine with Duarte in the dark.

Duarte sucked in a breath, then let it out again, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. "OK," he said. "OK, what do you want to know?"

Annie blinked. Now that someone was offering to give her answers, she found that all the coherent questions had cleared out of her mind, leaving nothing but a giant, hovering _what the fuck?_ over everything she'd experienced in the last twenty-four hours. She swallowed. _Pull it together, Agent Walker_. OK. First thing was first.

"I want to know what happened," she said. "What happened to him?"

Duarte nodded. "We'd better sit down," he said.

* * *

"The coroner said the angle suggested the bullet was self-inflicted." Duarte's voice was calm and even, coming from somewhere in the darkness beside her – Annie had reluctantly flipped off the flashlight to conserve the batteries – and Annie tried not to imagine Auggie's skull caved in by a bullet, _self-inflicted_, God. She groped for Auggie's arm on her other side, feeling the warmth through his sleeve, most definitely alive.

"Didn't you see the body?" she asked.

"There wasn't a whole lot – left of it," Duarte said. "There was a fire – arson. The official report judged that Jake had set the fire, then shot himself. I didn't want to believe it – I didn't believe it, I thought – someone had done it _to_ him. But I couldn't convince anyone else at the NSA to open an investigation."

"Seriously?" Annie leaned forward, hugging her knees. "An NSA agent offs himself and no-one raises an eyebrow?"

"It's not that simple." Duarte shifted, clothes rustling. "There was – Jake was testing some experimental technology, and there was an incident."

"_Incident_?" Annie knew what _incident_ meant in spy language. It meant _royal fuck up_.

"Something went wrong, and Jake lost his sight." Duarte sighed. "We all thought it would come back, but-"

"Wait," Annie said, "_wait_. You're saying Auggie went blind when he was – when he was still Jake?" She blinked, trying to assimilate that information. She still didn't understand how Auggie _could_ be Jake, but it hit her now that if it was true, everything she knew about Auggie's past before five years ago was – was –

"That's what I'm saying," said Duarte, and Annie forced herself to stop thinking and listen. "After that he was withdrawn, angry. And then three weeks later, he was dead." There was a pause. "Except apparently not. Jesus. I don't know whether I want to hug him or punch him."

"Before you make that decision," came Auggie's voice from Annie's other side, "I'd like to remind you that punching the disabled is definitely a no-no in the hero's handbook. I believe it's listed in the _do not do this_ section, right under _kicking kittens_."

"Auggie," Annie said, turning and flipping the flashlight back on, reaching for Auggie's forehead. "Are you OK?"

"Hey, nice to see you, too," Auggie said, pushing her hand away. "And yeah, I'm fine. Although if whoever set up this jackhammer in my skull doesn't get fired at the next general meeting of the Auggie Anderson buildings and services committee, I'll be writing a strongly-worded letter to the management."

Annie subsided. Auggie was joking; Auggie was OK. "Good," she said. "Because Duarte may be a hero, but I am totally not above punching disabled people, especially when they're being an _asshole_." She smacked him in the arm – and not lightly, either. He deserved the full force of her wrath, but right now, she would settle for a punch in the arm.

"Ow," Auggie said. "What was that for?"

"Lying to me," Annie said. "Passing out on me. Scaring me. Take your pick."

Auggie was quiet for a moment, face turned toward her. "Well," he said finally. "I guess I'm sorry for some of those things."

"Some?" Annie wasn't sure she wanted to hear which ones.

Auggie shrugged. "Not every day I get to pass out on a beautiful woman. You've got to take your opportunities where you find them."

Annie rolled her eyes, and on her other side, Duarte made a frustrated noise.

"Jake," he started, but Auggie interrupted him.

"It's Auggie," he said.

There was a startled silence, during which Annie _certainly_ didn't smirk in triumph, and then Duarte spoke again. "What the hell kind of a name is _Auggie_, anyway?" he said.

"Short for August." Annie could _hear_ Auggie's sarcastic smile. "The last thing I read before it all went dark was a calendar page. I can't figure out if that's so tragic it's banal or so banal it's tragic."

Duarte's face twitched a little – yeah, Annie couldn't figure out how to respond to that one, either – and then he forged ahead. "We need to talk," he said.

"So talk." Auggie drew his knees up and folded his hands over them.

"In private," Duarte said, and suddenly all of Annie's attention was on him as she realised just how much she still didn't know. OK, so the crazy thing about Auggie not being Auggie – or not always having been Auggie, if that was even the right verb tense, Jesus – that she was still getting used to, but at least she _knew_. But Auggie reprogramming computers without touching them? Auggie tracking her through that maze of corridors? Hell, Auggie _driving_ through backwoods Russia in the first place? No, that was still one hell of a question mark, and She was pretty sure Duarte wanted it to stay that way.

She heard Auggie take a breath, but no way she was letting them exclude her, not any more. "Oh, hell no," she said. "After all the crap I've been through in the last two days, anything you have to say, you can say in front of me." She glared at Duarte, but he avoided her eyes, shooting Auggie a meaningful look. _Yeah, right, Agent Asshole_, Annie thought. _Meaningful looks are really gonna get you a long way._

Beside her she felt Auggie shift. "She's right," he said. "She needs to know."

"It's classified," said Duarte, and Auggie snorted.

"Kyle, all due respect, but you are no longer the boss of me," he said, and cocked his head on one side. "Huh. that actually felt pretty good."

"OK, fine." Duarte sounded annoyed. "But I _do_ have a giant stack of non-disclosure forms in a filing cabinet back at the NSA that all have your signature on them."

"Really?" Auggie's mouth twitched up at the corners. "I think you'll find that those forms were signed by one Jake Foley, who, by the way, is dead." He held out his hand in Duarte's direction. "August Anderson." He said. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

Duarte stared. "I'd forgotten how much of a smartass you were," he said.

"Oh, believe me," Auggie said, "I am way more of a smartass now than I ever was before."

"I'm serious," Duarte said. "This is not an intel-sharing situation."

"Oh my God, would you just listen to yourself?" Auggie practically threw his hands up in the air, and Annie stared, surprised by the uncharacteristic emotional outburst. "_Intel-sharing situation?_ Listen, Kyle, we are so way beyond protocol here. If we don't tell Annie what's going on, she's going to try and find out, and she's a _great_ field agent, but she's not going to be able to fool the NSA's computer techs. They'll figure out that she's snooping around the program, they'll pick her up, and you know what'll happen next."

"Hey," Annie said. "I'm not going to tell anyone anything."

"Right," said Duarte. "And the best way to ensure that is to make sure you don't _know_ anything."

"No," Auggie retorted, "the best way to ensure it is to make sure that they never find out that she _might_ know anything. And the best way to do _that_ is to make sure she knows as much as possible."

Annie shook her head. "Wait," she said. "So does that mean I know everything, or nothing?"

"It means I'm going to tell you what you want to know, to the best of my ability," said Auggie, "whether Kyle likes it or not."

Annie glanced over at Duarte, but he was too busy glaring at Auggie to notice. "Well, I guess I can't stop you," he said, words bitten off.

"Great, your disapproval is noted," Auggie replied, hardly less tense.

"Um," Annie said, "you guys are really kinda freaking me out, here."

Auggie nodded, closing his eyes and breathing out. "Sorry," he said. "OK. So, you remember when I told you earlier that I had tons of tiny robots inside me?"

Annie stared at him. "Not... really?" she said.

"They're called _nanites_," said Auggie. "They're – they _were_ – an experimental technology the NSA was working on to try and build super soldiers. They work with my biological systems to allow me to do some pretty weird things."

Annie frowned. "Like reprogram the GPS into a tracker without even touching it?" she said.

"Right," Auggie nodded. "Plus some other stuff. Run faster than a speeding bullet, leap tall buildings in a single bound, see from here to Vladivostok – oh, no, wait, guess we passed the expiry date on that one."

"No." Annie shook her head, glancing from Auggie to Duarte. Deadpan, both of them. She might have beleieved Auggie was messing with her, but Duarte? "Come on, that's just – it's just ridiculous."

"Huh. I think you just summed up the entire NSA research strategy in a single sentence," Auggie said. "Give the woman a prize."

"So, wait," Annie said. "What, you're telling me you're like, like Superman?"

Auggie shrugged. "These days I prefer to think of myself as Daredevil," he said.

Annie shook her head, trying to take it all in. Dana Scully wasn't even close. "So..." she said, working her way through the implications, "is that how you're so... _good_ at everything? Like, how you always know it's me?"

Auggie grinned. "Nope, that's just my natural brilliance," he said. "I don't use the nanites if I can help it."

"Why not?" Duarte asked, and Auggie turned towards him.

"Because it hurts, and I think it might be doing something irreversible to my brain," he said, like he was talking about the weather. "And because I really don't want to lose any more of my senses."

"Wait, what?" Duarte said. "They're _hurting_ you?"

Auggie put a hand up to his face, scrubbing at the dried blood under his nose. "What did you think this was, corn syrup?"

Annie looked over at Duarte. He was shaking his head, eyebrows drawn down. Worried, not angry. "Since when?" he asked.

"Oh, right about the time the nanites overloaded and fried my optic nerves," Auggie said. "Wow, that was a real fiesta of a week."

"But-" Duarte was looking more and more confused. "Diane never told us anything-"

"She didn't know. _I_ didn't know. We both thought I was getting headaches because of the blindness. I didn't figure it out until-" Auggie closed his eyes for a second "-until I'd already decided I had to leave."

"Leave," Duarte said. "That's one way of describing what you did, I suppose." The worry was hardening into anger now.

"Kyle." Auggie scrubbed a hand over his face. "I couldn't tell you. I couldn't tell anyone, I couldn't risk it."

"So no-one knows?" Annie broke in, hoping she might be able to head off what looked like it might be a nasty argument. "I mean, about you being alive."

Auggie shook his head. "Just you two, now. And Dumont, I guess."

"Dumont?" Duarte's exclamation was sharp in Annie's ear. "_Dumont_ knows?"

Now it was Auggie's turn to look confused. "He – Doesn't he? I mean, I thought-"

Duarte was shaking his head. "I talked to him. He thought you were dead. That you'd killed yourself."

"Then why would he lure you here?" Auggie was completely alert, now, leaning forward, frowning. "I mean, you, maybe, but why Annie?"

"Wait a second, _lure_?" This was getting ridiculously cryptic, Annie decided. "Nobody _lured_ me here."

"Yeah, Annie, they did," Auggie said. "That briefcase never had any intel in it – it was probably just a tracking device. Dumont wanted you here, but I can't figure out why."

"Jake," Duarte said. "He thinks she's part of the program."

"_What?_" Auggie sat back, mouth open.

"The nanite program?" Bits and pieces of information started to come together in Annie's mind. The electromagnet. Dumont's taunting. The room with the door that could only be opened by a keypad, like someone was trying to see if she could get through. "Why – why would he think that? I hadn't even _heard_ of nanites until five minutes ago."

Auggie was shaking his head, dragging the back of his hand across his lips. "It's my fault. Shit, this is all my fault."

"How?" Duarte leaned across Annie, putting a hand on Auggie's shoulder. "Come on, Jake, how could this be your fault."

"Dumont knows how the nanites interact with computer systems better than anyone, probably even better than me," Auggie said. "He can recognise their traces, he's the only one who can."

"I thought they didn't leave traces," Duarte said.

"Exactly." Auggie was climbing to his feet now, pacing, hand trailing along the wall. "Their activity is completely smooth. Anyone else – even the best hackers – wouldn't even notice. But Dumont, he's _looking_ for that, for something too smooth to be real code."

"That doesn't explain what all this has to do with me," Annie said, getting up, too, and putting a hand on Auggie's chest to stop him.

"It's-" Auggie closed his eyes. "I read your file," he said finally, words tumbling over each other like he thought if he spoke fast enough, she wouldn't hear him.

"I know." Annie frowned. "I read yours, too."

"No, I mean," Auggie's hands found her shoulders and slid down to grasp her wrists. "I used the nanites to look at your real file. The one they don't let you see."

Annie shook her head. "What?"

"Wait." Duarte was standing now, too. "You broke into the CIA's secure information centre?"

Auggie nodded. "And I left a trail pointing right at Annie," he said.

"Why would you do that?" It was too much information, too fast.

"I wanted to see why you'd been promoted so quickly," Auggie said, arms loose at his sides now, shoulders slumped.

Annie stepped back, twisting her wrists out of Auggie's grip and then immediately missing the warmth. "You don't trust me," she said. "What, you think I'm a sleeper agent? A plant?"

"No, _no_." Auggie reached out for her again, but Annie ducked away and Auggie was left groping in empty air. "I just didn't want to get too close to someone I didn't understand everything about."

Annie nodded. "Well, I guess we're lucky I didn't feel the same way, huh?" she said, her throat choked with a tangle of rage and hurt and something that felt suspiciously like tears. "That's the deal, right? You get to hide your entire _life_ from me, but if you think anything about me is even slightly off, you go sifting through information that even I don't know about?"

Auggie didn't reply, and Annie lifted her chin. "So, what did you find? Why _did_ I get promoted so quickly, since it obviously wasn't for my talents?"

A muscle in Auggie's jaw twitched. "You're just – very good at what you do," he said, and Annie felt a tension inside her dissolve, a tension she hadn't even known was there. Of course, there were plenty of other tensions to take its place. Annie's stomach was like the tension equivalent of an all-night rave right now. And one with really shitty music, at that.

"OK," she said. "Well, now we've all figured out where we stand, I think we need to get further away from the entrance. Let's go." She turned sharply away from Auggie and led the way down the passage, not looking back to see if the other two were following. She wished again she was still wearing her heels. Storming off was _so_ much easier in heels.

* * *

As it turned out, the abandoned mine had a lot in common with the abandoned factory. OK, so there were no ugly green doors, but there were more passageways than really seemed necessary, unless the whole place had been created by some kind of giant, rock-boring rabbits. Hm. OK, moving on from that thought. Maybe there was a school of maze design in Petrozavodsk. That would explain a lot. Or, or maybe-

"Annie." Auggie's voice came from a little behind her, where Duarte was guiding him. "If you don't stop thinking so loud, the bad guys are going to hear us."

Annie shook her head. She wasn't ready to make up with Auggie, not yet. Ever since she'd started at the CIA, her life had been like trying to go down an up escalator – constantly losing her footing, never quite sure if there was a point, afraid to stop moving in case she lost all the gains she'd made. And Auggie – he'd been the one thing that had made sense, the one thing she felt like she could trust.

Yeah, right.

"Hey," came Auggie's voice again, and there was the sound of shifting pebbles. Annie looked back to see Duarte stumbling and Auggie barely catching him. "You should rest," Auggie said. "When was the last time you got any sleep?"

"I'm fine," Duarte said. "It's just dark in here, is all."

"OK, I'm sure you could walk another hundred miles, big guy," Auggie said, "but I need to rest. And it'll be easier for me to look for the other tracker if you're sleeping. Less electrical activity from your brain to confuse the signal."

"Wait," Duarte said. "You can sense the electrical activity in my _brain_?"

"Well." Auggie looked like he was considering. "Maybe not _your_ brain-"

"Ha ha." Duarte sighed. "Fine. Let's find somewhere to hole up."

A few hundred yards further on, they found what they were looking for: the passageway spread into a broad rocky platform, smooth and mostly free of boulders. Rails ran through the middle of the space, a cart full of rock rusting away in one entry way. Lots of escape routes.

Duarte sighed and sank to the ground, eyes drooping. Annie wasn't exactly feeling like doing a riverdance herself, but she was still too angry to relax. The tangle of emotions in her stomach felt like she'd swallowed a rock.

Auggie lowered himself to sit next to Duarte. Annie sat down a little further off, letting her thoughts swirl round her. There was no sound except Duarte's gradually deepening breathing, and the thoughts in Annie's head got louder and louder, roaring through her inner ears until she was ready to scream just to hear something else. Maybe she would have, if Auggie's voice hadn't broken in.

"You might as well let me have it," he said.

Annie stiffened. "Have what?"

"You know, all the crap you've got piled up waiting for me. I'm a big boy, I can take it."

Annie looked over at him. He was facing her, wearing his serious look. She'd seen that more times in the last twenty-four hours than in the entire four months she'd known him.

"I should," she said.

"Yeah," said Auggie. "You should."

Annie shook her head. Suddenly, she was just really tired. "Why didn't you tell me?" she said.

Auggie sighed. "Pretty much because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in a cage in the NSA basement, right up until my nice, peaceful death on the dissection table."

Annie felt a dull pain at the words. It wasn't surprise: it was resignation. "You don't trust me."

"Annie," Auggie said, shifting forward a little way, eyes pleading. "I love you. But if there's one thing I've learned from being a spy, it's that you can't trust anyone. Ever."

Annie blinked, swallowing back tears. "But you've told me now," she said.

"Yeah." A pause. "Well, I guess I'm not really that great at this spy stuff."

Annie breathed out, forcing her voice to stay even. "I won't tell anyone. You know I won't."

"You can't." Auggie swallowed. "Annie, this is really important. You can't ever breathe a word. I've already lost too many people I love because of what the NSA did to me."

After all the shit she'd been through in the last few hours, it was _now_ that Annie found herself fighting back tears. Figured. Auggie would hear it in her voice in a second. She cleared her throat. "You don't need to worry about me," she said. "I know how to keep a secret."

Auggie must have heard the wobbling that she couldn't keep out of the words – hell, _Duarte_ could probably hear it, and he was asleep – but he didn't comment, just nodded. "I know," he said. "I know you do."

Annie nodded too, taking a deep breath. The cavern they were in was spacious, extending upwards into shadows, but she felt like everything was pressing down on her. She needed to think about something else, anything else.

"What kind of mine is this?" she asked, shining the beam of the flashlight on the walls.

Auggie snorted a laugh. "It's, uh, it's tin," he said.

"Really." Annie frowned. "I didn't think there were any tin mines in western Russia. That is where we are, right?"

Auggie nodded. "Karelia," he said. "And I might not be right about the tin."

OK, _might not be right_? "You mean you're lying?"

"Ouch." Auggie scratched the back of his head. "Guess I deserved that."

"So what is it, then?" Annie shone the flashlight at the rusting ore cart, but there were no clues there.

"Um. Uranium."

"What?" Annie shone the flashlight back at Auggie, who at least had the decency to look apologetic. Well, semi-apologetic. And also like he thought her reaction was hilarious. "_Uranium?_"

"Oh, come on, what's the worst that could happen?" Auggie was openly grinning now. "We get bitten by a radioactive spider, we wake up with superpowers. It's a win-win situation!"

"OK, I don't think some of us _need_ any more superpowers," Annie pointed out.

"Don't tell me you'd turn down the opportunity to swing through the city on giant spiderwebs, even if you already had every other superpower there was," Auggie said. "Anyway, my first and last name begin with the same letter. I'm perfect for this job."

"Yeah, but it doesn't count if you chose your name yourself," Annie said, and then paused as something occurred to her. "Wait a minute." She shone the flashlight in Auggie's face. "Did you choose _Anderson_ so you could have a superhero name?"

Auggie shrugged. "Clark Kent was already taken. Plus, you know. Not very inconspicuous."

"You are _such_ a dork," Annie said, laughing in spite of herself. Damn, it really _was_ tricky staying mad at Auggie.

"Don't tell me you wouldn't have done the same thing." Auggie lay back on the ground, interlacing his fingers behind his head. "I mean, if you could choose any name you wanted."

Annie lay back, too, head pointing towards Auggie's. Any name. She ran through a few possibilities. _Mariah DuWinter_. _Jessamine Illyria_. _Ariadne Lavrador._ They were all awesome names – for certain values of awesome – but trying to imagine being called by any of them left Annie feeling weirdly lonely.

"Any name?" she said.

"Any name."

Annie nodded. "I'd choose Annie Walker," she said, and turned her head to see an indescribable expression cross Auggie's face, followed by a wry smile.

"I guess that's the one that I couldn't have," he said, and after all of her turbulent feelings about what Auggie's past meant for _her_, Annie suddenly found herself wondering what it meant for _him_.

She turned her face back toward the ceiling, way up there somewhere in the shadows. "What's it like?" she asked. "Having to build a new life."

Auggie sighed. "It's like – I don't know." there was a long silence, long enough that Annie thought that was all the answer she was going to get, and then Auggie spoke again.

"Have you ever wondered what it would be like, if no-one knew what you were like?" he asked. "If you had no ties, no responsibilities – if you could be whoever you wanted to be?"

Annie thought about it. No sister, no nieces, no Auggie. She shivered. "I can't imagine it."

"No," Auggie said. "Guess not." He shifted slightly. "I lost my memory once," he said.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. There was this thing with the nanites, and – well, anyway. I had no idea who I was, who I'd _been_. I didn't know what food I liked, what music. I didn't know if I'd been bullied at school or if I'd had the happiest childhood ever."

Annie shook her head. "Sounds like a nightmare."

"Yeah, it was." Auggie sighed again. "Mostly it was, but – it was also an opportunity. Not that I looked at it that way then, but – OK, you had a love affair that ended badly, right?"

Annie tensed. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"So, next time you're on a date, that's always going to be in the back of your mind. That betrayal of trust, the fact that that one time, the guy didn't turn out to be who you thought he was."

_Story of my life_, thought Annie. "What's your point?"

"My point is, the things that happened to you in the past affect the way you act in the future. Except if you don't have a past."

Annie tried to fit her head round what Auggie was saying. It was a hell of a lot to cope with, and she realised she had no idea when she'd last slept. "What did you do?" she asked. "When you lost your memory, I mean."

Auggie let out a puff of air. "I joined a cage-fighting ring," he said.

OK, Annie was totally awake again. "Seriously?" She propped herself up on her elbow. "_Seriously_. You seriously joined a cage-fighting ring."

Auggie shrugged, grinning. "Hey, I was a guy with no social security number who could take Hulk Hogan down with one punch. Seemed like the obvious thing to do at the time."

Annie shook her head, letting herself drop back down to the ground. "I cannot imagine you doing that," she said.

"That was kinda my point," Auggie replied.

Annie closed her eyes. Auggie cage-fighting – no, that was ridiculous. She tried to imagine it – tried to imagine Auggie at the NSA, working with Kyle, Auggie being able to see, Auggie being _Jake_. God. She rubbed her eyes.

"You can sleep, you know," Auggie said. "We're safe for the time being. I'll wake you if anything happens."

"I'm OK," Annie said, but even as she said it, she could feel herself drifting. She shook her head, trying to rouse herself, opening her eyes wide. "So what's different?" she asked, hoping that conversation would substitute for coffee in this situation. "What was Jake like?"

"Well for one thing, he was majorly awkward around women," Auggie said, and Annie snorted.

"You're kidding."

"Sadly, no. Twenty-five years of being a computer geek'll do that to a guy."

"Wow." Annie tried to fit that into her fuzzy mental picture of who Jake was. Cage-fighting, super-spying awkward loser? This was just getting worse and worse. "Is there anything that's the same?" she asked, feeling her eyelids drift shut, but apparently incapable of doing anything about it. "I mean, anything I know about you that's still true?"

Somewhere in her barely-conscious mind, she was aware that that hadn't maybe been the most sensitive way of phrasing that, but it was too late now. At any rate, Auggie didn't seem offended.

"Let's see," he said. "I still need a haircut. I still hate country music." He brushed a hand lightly over her hair, and Annie felt herself slipping into unconsciousness. From somewhere high, high above her, she heard Auggie's voice.

"I'm still on your side."

* * *

As usual, please don't mention anything about unaired episodes in the comments. In particular, if you could not mention anything about 1.07 until a couple of days after it's aired, that would be amazing. *hearts*


	5. Chapter 5

**Retrieval **

**Chapter Five**

The sound of voices, pitched low and nearby, drifted into Annie's consciousness before she was really awake. She lay still, listening to the sound but not the words, and putting together the pieces of where she was. Cold, uneven ground. No light to turn her eyelids red. A familiar voice – Auggie – and a less familiar one. Danger wasn't far away, but for the moment, she was safe.

"But we checked dental records, DNA." Through the lifting fog of sleep, she identified the voice as Duarte's. Mostly awake now, she kept her breathing even. There were still too many things she didn't understand, and maybe if she listened now, when they didn't know she could hear, she would find out some of the answers.

"Right." Auggie's voice. "And where are dental records and DNA information stored?"

"On compu-" Duarte trailed off. "Oh," he said. "Right."

A pause. Annie focussed on breathing like she was asleep. Breathe in. Breathe out.

"So whose body was it?" Duarte asked.

"Some poor bastard I found in the morgue," Auggie replied. "John Doe. Killed himself two days earlier."

"You _stole_ a body?"

Auggie sighed. "I wanted it to look like I'd shot myself in the head. It was either steal a body or, you know, actually shoot myself in the head, and while I'm all for method acting, sometimes these things can go too far."

"What about Diane's monitoring device?" Duarte said. "It stopped registering the nanites right around the time of the fire. In fact, I think in the end that was the only thing that convinced her that you were really gone."

"That's the thing," Auggie said. "I figured out how to shut them down."

"Shut them down?" Annie could hear the frown in Duarte's voice. "I thought that was supposed to kill you?"

"Well, OK," Auggie said, "it's more like sending them dormant. They're still ticking over, but they're not performing any non-essential functions."

"Like stand-by on a computer."

"Right. Disadvantages: no more super-powers. Advantages: Diane can't track me, plus a bonus lack of crippling headaches." Auggie's tone was the way it always was – sarcastic, light, like he wasn't talking about what must have been one of the most important events of his life.

"But how? I mean, Diane never even mentioned that something like that could be possible. It'd be like putting your liver on standby."

Auggie snorted. "You know, sometimes I kinda wish I could do that," he said. "But I'm pretty sure Diane didn't know about it. Remember the upgrade to the nanites about two months before the fire?"

Silence.

"...OK, I guess you don't. Well, we thought it was stable, but apparently there was a section of code designed for high-stress situations that never got fully tested. I don't know for sure, but I think it was supposed to tell the nanites to stay away from parts of the body that are at risk of overloading them. Of course, what it _actually_ does is make the nanites _attack_ parts of the body that are causing them to overload. Not to mention, apparently the first time the code got flipped on it created some kind of recursive loop that means the nanites now react to pretty much every situation as if it was high-stress."

"Jesus," Duarte said. "That's why they blinded you."

"Right. And that's why if I use them for anything that requires a lot of processing power, it starts to feel like they're eating my brain. But the thing is, the code's set up to make it a two-way situation. The nanites can shut me down if they're at risk, but I can shut _them_ down if they're causing me problems. It's supposed to be a failsafe."

"More like a clusterfuck," Duarte said. "When did you figure all this out?"

"It wasn't a bolt of lightning thing," Auggie said. "It took years of experimenting to put it all together. But I figured out the nanites were causing the headaches the first time I accidentally shut them down."

"And when was that?" Duarte asked.

Auggie hesitated. Not much, but enough, at least for someone who knew him as well as Annie did. "The day of the fire," he said.

A long pause. Annie focussed on breathing and didn't think about what it would be like if she came in to work one day and found out that Auggie would never be coming in again.

"You could have told us," Duarte said finally. "You know we would have done everything we could to help you."

"I know," Auggie said. "I was on my way to find you guys, and then – I realised this was a way out. Maybe the only way. Once I told Diane, I knew she'd find a way to reprogram the monitoring device so it could pick up the dormant nanites, and then I would probably never have another chance to just disappear. So I went to the morgue instead."

Duarte sighed. "Maybe Diane could've helped you get your sight back," he said. "If she'd understood about the bad code, maybe-"

"Maybe." The apology in Auggie's tone was laced with bitterness now. "But let's be honest, Kyle. The higher-ups barely tolerated me as a field agent when I was the six-million dollar man. Once I lost my sight, it was only a matter of time before they revoked my status. And we both know what that would've meant."

"Lou would've fought it," Duarte said. "You know she would never have abandoned you to be a lab rat."

"Lou's just one person," Auggie said. "Look, I know it must have sucked for you guys, OK? I get that. But I saw a way out and I took it, and I can't take it back now. I wouldn't, even if I could."

Annie didn't know if Auggie was expecting a response to that, but Duarte didn't reply, and after a moment there was the sound of someone shifting, moving closer to her. She willed herself to remain limp, wondering how much of what she'd found out so far Auggie would have said if he'd known she was conscious. There was a strange sensation of proximity, but no actual touch, and after a minute she realised Auggie was scanning her body with his hands again, looking for the other tracker.

"So, I heard Lou made full director," he said, tone just a little too casual.

Duarte didn't answer, and Auggie sighed.

"Kyle, I know you're mad at me, but-"

"I'm not mad," Duarte said, and Annie had the sense that Auggie's hands had paused in their movements.

"Yeah you are," he said.

Duarte let out a breath. "Yeah, OK, I am," he said. "I just... I don't get it. I mean, you say you just wanted to get out, but now here you are working for the CIA? How does that make any sense?"

Auggie's hands started to move again, pausing at Annie's hips and then moving over her stomach. "It doesn't, I guess. I don't know. I tried to be someone real, someone normal, I really did, but-" Auggie's hand brushes against Annie's injured thumb, and she swallows a cry "-it just, it didn't work out. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm a blind guy with several million dollars worth of government research inside of me and a whole bunch of experience in sneaking around stealing secrets. I just don't think I can be the tech support guy at Gigantocorp any more, you know?"

"So the CIA is somehow more moral than the NSA, is that what you're saying?" Duarte's tone hadn't changed, but there was something sharp under it now.

"No, God no." Auggie laughed, but he didn't really sound amused. "The only thing the CIA has over the NSA is that they have no idea what I am. As long as it stays that way, I can at least try to do something worthwhile."

"And is it?" Duarte asked, his words still sharp-edged. "Worthwhile?"

"Sometimes. Enough." Auggie's hands had moved to her shoulders now. Annie wondered if he could listen to her heart beating, tell that she was awake. "Listen, Kyle, I know this sucks, but you can't tell anyone, OK? Not even Diane."

"I wouldn't be able to even if I wanted to," Duarte said. "She left the Agency after the fire. She took it really hard, Jake."

Diane kinda sounded like someone Annie wanted to meet. She kinda sounded like maybe she had been to Jake what Annie was to Auggie, and Annie wasn't sure if she felt threatened or pleased by that. She didn't have much time to wonder about it, though, because suddenly there was a blinding pain in her head, white light flashing in front of her eyes, and for a second she was sure she'd somehow been shot, that it was all over, and she was sitting up, hands grabbing at her head, scrabbling, trying to make it _go away oh God I'm dying this is it._

And then it was gone, and all there was were aftershocks throbbing in the centre of her skull and a weird red edge to everything she looked at. And the first thing she looked at – the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes – was Duarte's face, dimly-lit and shadowed, but still clear enough to see his expression. Apparently, she wasn't the only one who'd thought she might be dying.

"Are you all right?" Duarte's hands were on her shoulders, gentle. She blinked at him.

"What the hell was that?" she said. "Auggie?"

"Present." Auggie's hoarse voice came from off to her left, and she turned her head – wow, that hurt a lot more than she was comfortable with – and saw him sitting hunched over, knees drawn up to his chest, fingers pressing into the skin of his temples.

"You OK?" Duarte asked him, still keeping one hand on Annie's shoulder.

Auggie lifted his head towards them, blinking slowly. A trail of blood tracked down from one nostril. "Oh God," he said. "I can't see."

_What?_ Annie glanced at Duarte, but he looked as freaked as she felt.

"Kidding," Auggie said. "Guys, I'm kidding."

"Jesus, Jake." Duarte scrubbed a hand over his face.

"What? Poor taste?" Auggie half-winced, half-grinned. "My head feels like it's about to split open, if it makes you feel any better."

"You're bleeding," Duarte said, and Auggie's hand went to his nose.

"Great," he said. "Well, I guess we found the other tracker."

"You're kidding." Annie rubbed at her temples, trying to push away the nagging after-image of pain. "That was the _tracker_?"

Auggie nodded. "I guess Dumont must have rigged it so it would send out feedback if anyone tried to interfere with it. You get a headache which discourages you from trying again, and whatever device you're using to deactivate it gets fried." He grimaced. "Which in this case is me."

"Well, at least we know where it is now," Annie said. "Can't you just cut it out?"

"Annie, I am many things, but a brain surgeon is not one of them." Auggie ran his hands through his hair. "Dumont must have really wanted to keep tabs on you."

"So you're saying we're stuck down here," Duarte said.

"Not necessarily." Auggie's face was thoughtful. "Annie's stuck down here, but I didn't find anything when I checked you for other devices."

"I'm not going to just leave you here," Duarte said.

"Kyle, I'm pretty sure the only way we're going to make it out of this situation is if we do it _really_ fast." Auggie leaned forward. "We're gonna need a plane."

"A _plane_?" Duarte shook his head. "I can't fly a plane."

"But Annie can, right Annie?" Auggie grinned over at her.

"I did a couple simulations at the Farm." Annie tried to sound more confident than she felt. "I mean, I'm not exactly Amelia Earhart."

"Well, that's lucky, seeing as she went missing flying a plane," Duarte muttered, and Annie felt her eyes narrow.

"So I guess your amazing plan is for us to sit around here till Dumont finds us?" she said. Duarte met her glare for glare, but Auggie raised his hands.

"Girls, girls, you're both pretty," he said. "Well, I know Kyle is for sure, anyway. Look, Dumont's bound to have some kind of quick getaway transport around here somewhere. We just need to know exactly where it is so we can plan the quickest route to get there. Kyle, you go out and find it, Annie and I'll sit tight here. Don't get lost."

"Auggie, are you sure that's a good idea?" Annie said, keeping her face as blank as possible. She hadn't wanted Duarte with them in the first place, but having him here was a damn sight better than letting him go out there with detailed knowledge of where they were.

"Why wouldn't it be?" Auggie asked, and Duarte cleared his throat.

"She doesn't trust me," he said. "Remember?"

Auggie rolled his eyes. "Kyle, go. Annie, we need to talk."

Annie frowned. Not only had she failed to hide her subtext from Duarte, now Auggie was acting like she was some teenager that needed to be straightened out. OK, sure, so she was less experienced in the field than either of them, but she was a grown woman and she had good instincts and something was _up_ with Duarte. She watched him go, and then turned back to Auggie.

"Look, I know you have a lot of history with Duarte," she started before Auggie could launch into whatever lecture he had planned. "I know you were friends, but-"

"Are," said Auggie. "We _are_ friends."

"Right." Annie felt thrown off-balance by the interruption. Duarte had been friends with Jake. Auggie was something different, some_one_ different. A residual spike of pain pierced her thoughts, leaving them muddy.

"Annie." Auggie said, reaching forward and finding her shoulders with his hands. "You heard something, I get that. You thought it was Dumont talking to Kyle, but it wasn't."

"How do you know?" Annie shook her head. "You weren't there."

"I know because I know Kyle," Auggie said. "And more importantly, I know Dumont. He's pushing your buttons, Annie, it's what he does."

"Come on," Annie said. "I know you and Duarte think Dumont's like, this crazy criminal mastermind or whatever, but I've met the guy. He's just a nerd who thinks he's Neo and has a God complex. How would he even know what buttons to push?"

Auggie closed his eyes for a second. "OK, there's two things you need to know about Dumont. First, he's frighteningly intelligent. And second, he's a complete sociopath. He's wanted the nanites ever since he first found out about them back in oh-three. I mean, he's probably the best hacker in the world, and we're about something that'll not only let him interface directly with computers, but also make him faster and stronger than any of the guys who ever made his life a misery. It's basically the geek holy grail."

"So he's obsessive," Annie said. "That doesn't make him a genius."

"Annie, Dumont should be rotting in a Russian prison right now," said Auggie. "Instead, he's here in the woods with his own little empire, right back on the trail of the nanites. Hell, he's even still in the same country that's supposed to have him incarcerated! What does that tell you?"

Annie shrugged, trying to sound nonchalant. "I guess Russian security isn't what it used to be."

"God." Auggie took his hands off her shoulders, rubbing them over his face with a noise of frustration. "He brought you here. He knows you have something to do with the nanites, which means he must have hacked into every government intelligence server as soon as he broke out of jail. You can be damn sure he knows as much about you as the CIA does, probably more than you know about yourself, and he will do anything, _anything_ to get his hands on what he thinks is inside of you. Don't underestimate him, Annie. You can't afford to."

"Right," Annie said. "Well, if he's so smart, how come he didn't figure out that I don't _have_ any freaking nanites in me?"

Auggie shook his head. "Everybody has one thing they can't be objectively rational about. For Dumont, it's the nanites. He found out everything he could about you, put it all together, and convinced himself that it meant that you were the next generation of the program. It's plausible from what he knew, and more importantly, he _wanted_ it to be true, because if the program was really defunct, it would mean he had no chance of ever becoming the Nietzschean übermensch he believes he deserves to be."

Annie stared. "Did you just say _Nietzschean übermensch_?"

"Annie, please." Auggie reached for her again, but Annie pulled back, standing up and taking a step away. All this sitting around talking was making her antsy. That, and the fact that she was being hunted by a crazy guy and she was starting to wonder if maybe the guys on her side weren't kinda crazy as well.

"No, listen," she said, and Auggie got to his feet, too, facing her and wearing what she thought of as his _you can tell me anything_ face, which right now kinda made her want to punch him. "It doesn't make sense. You can tell me Dumont's the smartest guy in the world till you're blue in the face, but the fact is, I'm on this mission because I spilled _coffee_ on Joan's dress. So unless you're about to tell me that Dumont somehow used his amazing hacking skills to knock over that cup, what we're looking at here is a guy who fixated on the first person he saw because he is _crazy_."

"You're not here because of coffee," Auggie said, and the _you can tell me anything_ face was gone now, and hey, Annie was beginning to wonder if Auggie didn't maybe want to punch her, too.

"So why. Come on, Auggie, amaze me." Annie waited, but Auggie just shook his head and looked away. "That's what I thought," she said, and turned away. "You know, I think you were right," she said. "I think everyone _does_ have one thing they can't be rational about. And this is yours."

She started walking, not really thinking about where she might go, just wanting to get some space, some distance, even if it was only the length of the rock chamber. She'd only taken three steps, though, when Auggie called to her.

"Annie," he said.

"I'm done talking right now," she said, not looking back.

"You weren't pulled off the Farm because of your linguistic skills," Auggie said, and _that_ was enough to stop Annie cold. She turned, shining the flashlight back. Auggie's face was pale, the smudge of blood under his nose seeming almost black. There was no anger on his face, only resignation.

"What?" she said.

Auggie took a breath. "When I read your file... I found something."

Annie felt the back of her throat go dry, and she turned all the way around. "What?" she said, suddenly feeling how cold the rocky ground was under her bare feet. "Auggie, what?"

"The man you met in Sri Lanka," Auggie said. "Ben Mercer."

Annie shook her head, heart thumping. "That wasn't his name."

"Yeah, Annie, it was." Auggie's hands flexed at his sides like he wanted to hold something, but he didn't reach for her, and she wasn't close enough for him to have touched her if he tried. "He wasn't just another guy. He was a rogue agent."

Annie actually felt the words slide into her brain. They felt sharp, like needles. "No," she said. "Come on, that's ridiculous." She knew it was her saying it – it was her voice, her mouth moving – but the words seemed disconnected from her somehow.

"I'm sorry," Auggie said. "I'm so sorry. Mercer has secrets that could bring down some powerful people, and when they found out you'd had contact with him, they drew you in. They're hoping that you'll bring him out, that if you get in trouble in the field, he'll-" He stopped, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "I'm so sorry," he said again.

"You're sorry?" Annie felt like her legs were going to buckle. _Concentrate. Stay smart, stay strong._ "You're _sorry_? How long have you known about this?"

"That's not what's important right now," Auggie said. "Annie, two days before the retrieval mission came up, the highest levels at the CIA received information that Mercer was in Helsinki and that the NSA was planning a mission there. We don't care about whatever intel was supposed to be in that briefcase, but you got sent anyway. Tell me that's a coincidence."

"He's in Helsinki?" Annie thought fast, trying to see all the tangled threads that Auggie was holding out to her.

"No, no, I don't think he is. I think Dumont sent that intel, just like he sent intel to Duarte. He knew the CIA wouldn't be able to resist sending you. He pushed their buttons, just like he's been pushing yours."

"Right. And which of my buttons is he pushing?" Annie asked. "The one that makes me instinctively suspicious of everyone? Because you're doing a pretty good job of pushing that one all by yourself."

Auggie swallowed, and it was dark, it might have been her imagination, but his eyes were oddly bright in the faint glow from the flashlight. "I didn't want you to find out this way," he said.

Annie felt a coldness spread through her, like she was stepping away from herself. "Did you want me to find out at all?" she asked.

Auggie raised his eyes to the ceiling. "It's not simple. It's not that simple."

"From where I'm standing, it looks pretty clear," Annie said. "I guess you were right all along. You can't trust anyone. Ever."

Auggie reached out a hand toward her, but she backed away, then turned, headed for the other side of the chamber. Auggie didn't follow – maybe Auggie _couldn't_ follow, with the sound of her movement reduced to a whispering of bare feet on rock. Annie didn't care to look back and find out. She knew she couldn't go far – no matter how angry she was at Auggie right now, he was the closest thing she had to an ally out here – but she needed, _needed_ to get away, just to be alone for long enough to get her head straight.

Although as it turned out, she didn't get long at all.

* * *

At first, the sound was right on the edge of Annie's hearing, and sporadic enough that she thought it must be her brain playing tricks on her. She'd been having trouble with red-fringed vision and phantom pain ever since Auggie had tried to deactivate the tracker in her head, and it was quiet in the mine, no trickling water or falling rocks, no talking now that she and Auggie were sitting on opposite sides of the chamber, so quiet that the silence had started pressing in on her, so quiet that it wasn't really much of a stretch to think that she might have started imagining noises just for _something_ to listen to.

It didn't take long, though – barely any time at all, not enough time to be prepared, to be _ready_ – before the sound got louder, and if Annie had still been wondering whether she was imagining things, it only took one glance at Auggie, already on his feet, head up, listening, to make it clear that she wasn't.

The sound got louder still.

Footsteps.

Annie shut the flashlight off and stepped back, slipping into the passageway she'd been sitting in the mouth of. She wanted to call to Auggie, let him know she'd heard the steps, that she was hiding, but she couldn't risk it, couldn't risk giving away their position. She had to just hope that he'd trust her instincts, even though _trust_ was in serious short supply around here right now. She had to hope he'd find a way to hide himself, even though there was no-one to guide him. Then again, maybe she'd had a rug or two pulled out from under her in the last hour, but Auggie was still Auggie, and _helpless_ wasn't really in his vocabulary.

A faint light swept across part of the chamber once, then again, like some kind of bizarre underground lighthouse. A few seconds later, it was back, stronger. Two lights. Voices. Annie slipped a little further back in the passageway, trying to remember how it had looked before she shut the flashlight off. She had an image of rubble strewn across the floor, and a sinking suspicion that there was a long straight section to negotiate before there were any turns.

A narrow beam of white light passed over the entrance to the passage, and Annie pressed herself back against the wall as it passed, then peered out. The light kept sweeping around the chamber, and Annie saw it was another flashlight, held by a small, stocky man who had just stepped into the chamber from a passage fifty feet to her left.

Dumont.

"This is where it came from," he said, and the two heavies from earlier stepped into the chamber behind him. "Check out all these corridors."

Heavy #1 started in Annie's direction, shining his light down the first passage. Annie swallowed and tried to remember exactly where Auggie had been. Would they find him first, or her? She was pretty sure he'd been almost directly opposite her, which meant she was a lot closer to Dumont's search pattern than he was. There wasn't much chance of getting away without them becoming aware of her – even if she could run down a rubble-choked passage in the dark without breaking an ankle, she'd be sure to make enough noise to alert them – but maybe she could draw them away, leaving Auggie in the clear. Hell, with any luck, they didn't even know to look for him. Either way, she had to move, or she was as good as caught.

She edged back up the passageway, trying to move as fast as she could without making a lot of noise. Her bare foot smacked against a sharp piece of rock, and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out. Still, it wasn't as difficult as she'd thought. If she could just-

"Dumont," came a voice from the chamber, and Annie froze, and then reversed her trajectory, half-stumbling back to the entranceway because she couldn't believe- She couldn't believe-

Oh, Christ.

Auggie was standing in the open, full in the beam of Dumont's flashlight. He looked relaxed, like he'd just strolled out to say hello to an old friend. Dumont, on the other hand, looked like someone had just smacked him in the face. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on Annie's part.

"Jake Foley." Dumont shook his head slowly, the look of shock slowly transforming into a delighted smirk. "Well, I gotta say, I didn't see _that_ coming."

"You want me to take him down?" Heavy #1 asked, and Dumont snorted.

"I'd like to see you try," he said.

Heavy #1 took a step toward Auggie, and Dumont raised a hand. "That wasn't an order, idiot," he said. "Do you even speak English at _all_?"

Heavy #1 shrugged and stepped back again, and Annie felt her tensed muscles relax a little. She ought to go, to run – she knew that was why Auggie had given himself up in the first place, to give her that chance – but she couldn't leave him. And then again, she was pretty sure she knew what the outcome of a fight would be. She could maybe take down one of the heavies – maybe – but two, both armed? Not a chance. So here she was, couldn't stay, couldn't leave, couldn't do anything to stop what was happening. That was pretty much a metaphor for her entire life, actually.

"It's good to see you again, Jake," Dumont said, taking a step closer to Auggie.

Auggie tilted his head slightly. "I wish I could say the same," he said. "Oh, no, wait. I don't. In fact, not being able to see you again might be the only good thing about being blind."

"About... what?" Dumont frowned.

"Blind. You know, that thing where you can't see?" Auggie smirked, and wow, actually his smirk was almost a match for Dumont's. "Do you even speak English at _all_?"

"I see being dead has improved your sense of sarcasm," Dumont said, face cold now.

"Oh, it has," Auggie said. "But that wasn't sarcasm. Your precious nanites aren't as user-friendly as you think." His grin broadened, and he spread his arms. "Still want to inject them into your body?"

"No." Dumont shook his head. "You're lying. The nanites would have repaired any damage. I read the files. I know their capabilities better than anyone."

Auggie shrugged. "I guess you're not as great at this hacking game as you thought. Maybe you should take a refresher course. Oh, hey, you know where they have courses like that? In _jail_."

"You're funny." Dumont pulled something small and black out from under his jacket. "You know, in a boring way," he added, and pointed the object at Auggie.

White flowers bloomed in front of Annie's eyes, and she felt herself falling, felt the impact of her shoulder against the rock wall like it was something happening to someone else five miles away. Pain flared, reaching into the core of her brain, but she forced herself to keep her eyes open, and somewhere, elsewhere, there was an Annie who wasn't affected by the pain, an Annie who was watching, helpless, as Auggie crumpled to the ground on the other side of the chamber.

And then that Annie was overwhelmed, and there was nothing but the Annie who was losing consciousness, and later, the Annie who regained consciousness to find that Duarte was standing over her and Auggie was gone.


	6. Chapter 6

Thanks again for all the kind comments, you guys! This beast is nearing the end now. One more chapter after this one, I reckon. Hope you enjoy!

* * *

**Retrieval**

**Chapter Six**

"What happened?"

Duarte's hand was warm on her back, supporting her, but she shrugged him off, ignoring his questioning glance and flipping on the flashlight she still held. She swept the beam across the walls and floor of the chamber, but there was nothing: no Dumont, no heavies, no Auggie. She turned to Duarte, then, shining the beam in his face.

"Where's Auggie?" she asked.

Duarte put a hand up to shade his eyes, pushing the flashlight away with the other. "I was about to ask you the same thing," he said. "Are you OK?"

Annie struggled into a sitting position, rubbing the back of her head. The tracker. It had to have been the tracker, the pain was the same, the white lights and the red-tinged vision. But Dumont hadn't taken her, which meant most likely he hadn't known she was there.

"He did something," she said. "Dumont. He knocked Auggie out."

"Dumont was here?" Duarte lifted his head, scanning the surroundings like he was expecting Dumont to jump out from behind a boulder or something. "Damn. _Damn_."

_Damn_ was pretty much how Annie felt right now, too. Well, except maybe she felt more like _fuck_. "We have to get him back," she said, climbing to her feet and leaning against the wall as the passageway spun lazily around her.

"Hey, _hey_," Duarte said, grabbing her upper arms as she started a slow topple forward. "You're in no condition to go anywhere. What happened to you?"

Annie started to shake her head, then stopped when she decided she _really_ didn't like the floor to be at that angle. "Something Dumont, uh," she said, trying to sort through her tangled thoughts. "It must've, must've been what he did to Auggie. Something electronic."

"He knocked Auggie out with something electronic?" Duarte was ducking his head, peering into her face, and for a moment she just wanted to let him do this, let him look after her and go after the bad guys and save Auggie so she could _sleep_.

It wasn't a long moment.

"What were you doing?" she asked, pulling back again from his touch and putting her back against the wall. Maybe she could barely stand, but she wasn't going to let Duarte see just how out of it she was. Hell, she wasn't going to _be_ that out of it. _Mind over matter_.

"What?" Duarte said. "I was looking for a plane. You know that."

"Let me tell you what I know," Annie said. "I know you went away and twenty minutes later, Dumont showed up. I know that he had no way of knowing where we were. I know that when I passed out, Dumont and Auggie were here, and now it's just you." She straightened her back a little, lifting her chin. "So you want to tell me again what you were doing?"

Duarte closed his eyes for a second, raising his hands in a gesture of frustration. Opening his eyes again, he met her stare for stare, nostrils flared. "I was _looking_ for a _plane_," he said.

"I don't believe you." Annie's head was buzzing, but the one thought that cut through all of it was that she was tired of being played, just so _sick_ of it.

Duarte shrugged, anger tight in the lines around his eyes. "I don't care," he said. "I don't get what your problem is with me, but right now the only thing that matters to me about you is that you don't get in the way of my getting my friend back before that psycho rips his vital organs out of his body with an electromagnet. So are you going to co-operate, or am I going to have to immobilise you?"

It turned out that rage was sharp enough to slice through the fog in Annie's mind. "Are you _threatening_ me?" she said, and somewhere underneath the buzzing and the muzziness, her mind was already racing. Could she take Duarte? Would it be better to run? Where was the nearest weapon?

Duarte shook his head. "It's not about you," he said, and turned away, and Annie, so tense with anticipation that her back ached with it, tried to reach forward and stop him and almost fell.

"Hey," Duarte said, turning back and catching her, hands on her shoulders this time, and she wanted to push him away again, but not as much as she wanted to stay upright, so she let it go, cheeks burning.

"Don't patronise me," she said, almost spitting the words out. "I have no reason to trust you."

"How about the fact that Jake trusts me?" Duarte said, and Annie closed her eyes. It wasn't enough. Not when she didn't even know who _Jake_ was, not when she didn't even know who _Auggie_ was any more .

Duarte drew in a deep breath. "Look," he said. "You have a tracker in your head. The moment you leave the mine, Dumont and his goons will find you. They'll find anyone who's with you. I can't risk taking you with me."

Annie opened her mouth to protest, but Duarte squeezed her shoulders. "Come on," he said. "I'm not trying to cut you out, here. Sometimes the best thing you can do for the mission is nothing at all."

Swallowing, Annie felt the slow throbs of pain that still emanated from the back of her skull. _Dammit_.

"OK," Duarte said. "There is an airfield. It's about a quarter mile away, and the mine is between the factory and the airfield, so that'll work in our favour. I want you to stay near the entrance to the mine and wait for my signal. I'll get Jake, and I'll pick you up on the way back. Annie." He ducked his head and peered into her face. "When the time comes, we may have to run. Do you think you can handle that?"

Right now, Annie felt like she couldn't handle staying upright, but Duarte's words made her spine snap straight. "I can handle it," she said, biting the ends off the words.

Duarte watched her face a moment longer, then nodded. "Good," he said. "I'll be as quick as I can."

"Hey," Annie said as he turned to go, and he looked back over his shoulder at her. "Don't get caught," she said.

Duarte's lips twitched into a half-smile. "It's a simple retrieval," he said. "What could possibly go wrong?"

* * *

It was cold in the passageway that led to the entrance; colder than it had been deeper underground, and Annie thought about that for a while, still fighting her way through the swathes of cobwebs in her mind. Something about the outside air penetrating this far in. It had been warm – hot, even – in Helsinki, but apparently August nights in Karelia weren't exactly tropical. At any rate, she wished – again – that she had shoes. Any shoes would do. She'd settle for Birkenstocks. Hell, she'd even wear socks with them. Style was weirdly unimportant when you were huddled in an abandoned uranium mine waiting to see if your best friend had died an agonising death because of you.

Annie swallowed hard. Her plan of _not thinking about it_ was really not going too great. The problem was, there were only so many distractions to keep her from imagining what it would be like if Dumont put Auggie in that electromagnetic chamber. It was night, so there wasn't even a faint glow to give her something to look at, and she couldn't turn the flashlight on in case one of the goons was skulking around the place, so that more or less left listening to the various _really quiet_ night noises and thinking. And the problem with thinking was that there were only three things she could manage to think about right now: one, how Dumont might be torturing Auggie to death right now; two, how the CIA was using her as bait and Auggie had known about it all along; and three, how cold her feet were.

And she'd already covered the feet thing. Damn.

She had no real idea how long it had been since Duarte left, but she did know that it had been daytime then, and now it was night. It must have been hours, felt like days. She tried counting seconds for a while – anything to drown out the endlessly circling anxiety – and made it to seven minutes before she remembered that she'd entrusted Duarte with complete responsibility for saving Auggie. Duarte, who she didn't trust. Duarte, who had recently suffered a fairly serious head injury and was going up against two heavily-armed mercenaries and a man who made comic-book villains look well-adjusted.

It had been hours.

_Start again_, Annie thought. _One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three-_

-and then, of course, there was the fact that Auggie meant nothing to Dumont. Less than nothing. Auggie – all of Auggie, everything he was – was just inconvenient packaging for the technology Dumont wanted, and Dumont wasn't even going to think twice about ripping that packaging off.

_One Mississippi. Two Mississippi._

Dumont was going to kill Auggie. In all likelihood, Dumont already had killed Auggie. And all Annie had done was sit here and wait, sit here and assume that somebody else would fix the problem. _Some CIA agent you are. No wonder all they think you're good for is bait._

Annie stood up, bouncing on her heels a little to try and bring feeling back into her feet. _I can't risk taking you with me_, that was what Dumont had said. _They'll find anyone who's with you._ He'd been right – he was still right, much as Annie hated to admit it – and then again, things had changed. Annie wasn't with anyone any more. Maybe Dumont would find her the moment she stepped out of the mine, but maybe he didn't even care any more, not now he had Auggie. And maybe whatever he'd used to knock out Auggie had killed the tracker anyway. Whatever the case, all she was risking was her own life.

Jesus. Her feet were really fucking cold.

_One Mississippi_, thought Annie. _Two Mississippi. OK._

She drew in a breath, and headed for the entrance to the mine.

* * *

There were no visible lights at the factory, and Annie almost walked straight past it in the dark. The only thing that alerted her was a slight lightening of the air to her left as she slipped through the forest, the faint glow of the stars stronger in the clearing around the factory than under the trees. The black bulk of the buildings loomed against the sky, and she tried to remember where the door was that they'd found earlier. The south wall. That's what Auggie had said, _keep heading south_. Duarte had taken the compass, and Annie stood in the shadow at the edge of the clearing and scanned the sky for the pole star, finding it finally just above the dark line of the treetops. A compass would have been nice, but so would a gun, a car, a pair of shoes. Annie would get by on what she had.

Even knowing the right wall, the door was hard to find in the dark. Annie found herself trailing a hand along the wall, shuffling to avoid tripping over anything that might be lying on the ground. This was how Auggie lived all the time. If Auggie lived at all any more.

Her hand struck against something jutting from the wall, and a couple seconds tactile investigation confirmed it was a door frame. Annie remembered the alarm from earlier. Had Dumont repaired it? How had Auggie disabled it in the first place?

Oh yeah, he was a freak of nature who could communicate directly with electronic devices. Well.

Annie spent a second wishing she had nanites of her own, and then a couple more remembering all the reasons why that was a terrible idea. Then she dropped to her knees and found her trusty hairpin, fingers fumbling for the lock. Really, hairpins ought to feature more strongly in CIA training. Maybe they could have joint lock-picking and makeover classes. God knew, some of her fellow recruits could really have done with some haircare tips.

There. And there. The tumblers turned quietly over, and Annie rose to her feet and pushed gently down on the handle, remembering the creak of the hinges from last time and nudging the door open as slowly and smoothly as she could. There was a low protest of aged metal, but it was quiet, quiet enough, Annie hoped, in the same way that she hoped that there was no alarm and that Dumont wasn't tracking her any more. For a second, she had a mental image of the entire enterprise, a fragile, matchstick structure held together by gravity alone. If she made one wrong move, if one match was in the wrong place-

-and now wasn't the time to think about that. Annie swung the door closed behind her, and began her search for Auggie.

* * *

As it turned out, she found him in the most unexpected place. Of course, that wasn't nearly as unexpected as what happened after that, but when you've discovered that your best friend has super powers, the love of your life is a spy and your employer is using you as bait all in the same twenty-four hours, _unexpected_ starts to get kind of banal. All the same, when Annie peered through the crack in the door of the room she'd just dodged into to see who the footsteps she'd heard belonged to and saw a familiar mop of brown hair and a hand trailing along the wall, she thought for a moment that maybe she was hallucinating, that maybe the tracker was affecting her brain more severely than she thought. It was only when Auggie had already passed and was continuing on down the corridor that she pulled herself together enough to step out.

"Auggie," she said, her voice cracking a little, the relief making her stomach burn and flip.

Auggie turned back toward her, head lifted slightly like he was trying to figure out where she was.

"I'm here," she said, taking a step forward. "Are you OK? I thought- I thought-" She trailed off as Auggie walked toward her. It didn't matter what she'd thought, what images she'd had in her head. Auggie was upright, walking, not obviously injured. Thank God. Thank _God_.

Auggie stopped in front of her, reaching out, and she stood still as his hands fell on her shoulders, feeling the comforting weight. "You're OK," she said, and shivered a little as his hands moved up to her head, her face. "Auggie?" she said, reaching up and grabbing his wrists, because actually, this was kind of weird.

And then Auggie drew back, pulling out of her grip, pulling back, pulling back like he was going to-

-Annie dodged instinctively, but late, too late, because it was Auggie, it was _Auggie_ and he'd been lying to her about so many things for so long but she'd still thought, she'd still thought-

-but it didn't matter why (_not now, not yet_), the point was, she dodged too late, and caught almost the full force of the blow on one shoulder. Annie had been in fist-fights before – too often, too many – and she'd taken some hard punches, some that she thought maybe she wasn't going to come back from, but this, _this_-

-she was flying through the air, Auggie's fist had sent her flying like she weighed no more than a child, and in that long moment of clarity she knew it was going to hurt like a bitch when she hit the ground, knew that her shoulder was wrenched, maybe even dislocated, knew that Auggie had hit her because she'd seen him do it, she'd _seen_, and if she hadn't she wouldn't have believed it, even after everything.

And then the ground hit her even harder than Auggie had, and she felt all the breath leave her body, and she knew, she _knew_ she needed to get up and run _now right now_ but she couldn't make her body obey her, couldn't make it do anything but lie there struggling desperately for breath, even the pain of the impact not registering yet, nothing but _air air air please God I can't breathe_.

Auggie loomed in her vision, blurred around the edges, kneeling beside her and fumbling on the ground, fingers snagging the edge of her sleeve and then moving up her arm. She pulled in as much air as she could and tried to say his name, but what came out was hardly more than a croak and then she was rising, Auggie was lifting her, hands under her armpits and the shrieking of her wrenched shoulder was starting to penetrate now, but she didn't have time to worry about it, didn't have time for anything except _how do I get away?_

Auggie raised her above his head, face tilted up toward her, lifting her like she was nothing. There was no recognition in his face, but there was no anger, either. There was nothing. Like she was nothing.

She struggled, kicking out at his stomach, but she had no leverage, and Auggie's grip on her didn't falter. And then she was weightless again, sailing through the air, and this time it was a wall that cut off her flight, and even though the crunch of the impact was bone shaking, she wasn't too out of it to get that this was her moment, this was the break. If she'd hit the floor again, if she'd had to take the time to struggle to her feet, who knew if she would've made it, but as it was, she was hurt but upright, forcing her knees not to buckle, and she had maybe three seconds before Auggie would find her, three seconds' grace to figure out how she was going to win.

_One Mississippi._

Auggie walked forward, hands outstretched. He couldn't see her, but she could see him. She could use that.

_Two Mississippi._

He was strong, frighteningly strong, but he was moving clumsily, jerkily, like he'd been hurt. She shifted out of the way as his hands made contact with the wall near her head, and Auggie's head snapped up and around, sightless eyes staring straight at her.

Oh, right. He had super-hearing, too.

_Three Miss-_

This time, Annie was ready for Auggie's punch, and she ducked, bruised ribs complaining, and came up under his reach. _Real fights are won up close_, she remembered, and threw her own punch, Auggie's head snapping around. Apparently, nanites didn't make you invulnerable. Good to know.

That wasn't going to win the fight for her, though. Auggie might not be able to see, but he could stove in her head with a single well-aimed blow. Her only chance was to knock him down long enough to get out of range. Annie let her instincts take over, automatically moving into the manoeuvre she'd practised so many times. Elbow to the neck. Feet as pivot point. Weight swinging round. Even as she moved through the motions, she knew it wouldn't work. Auggie had taught her that move, no way would she be able to use it to take him down.

And then he was falling, and Annie didn't wait around to ask why it had worked. It was time for Operation Run Like Hell.

* * *

There were two problems with running away from Auggie, Annie decided. One was that apparently, he could run _really_ fast. The other was that his ability to track her by hearing apparently pretty much cancelled out the fact that he couldn't see her.

Of course, there was also the problem that he was _Auggie_ and she didn't understand why she was having to run from him in the first place, but if Annie stopped to think about that right now, she was pretty certain she would only live long enough to get to _why is he doing th-_, so she put that question to the back of her mind and concentrated on running.

She rounded a corner and grabbed the nearest door handle, flinging the door open without checking her speed. There was a long straight coming up before the next intersection, and she opened every door she could, skidding into a left turn just as she heard the sound of Auggie crashing into the first one. She slid to a stop outside the third door she came to and opened it, slamming it shut again as she heard another crash round the corner. Forcing her breathing to quiet, she retraced her steps as fast as she could, slipping past the intersection where Auggie was still finding his way round the doors and carrying on, hardly daring to breathe.

By the time Auggie made it to the intersection, Annie was forty yards down the corridor, and she stopped dead, holding her breath as his hand hit the corner and he stood still. There was no way this could work. Annie could hear her heart thumping in her ears, and if it sounded like a marching band to her, then surely Auggie would hear it.

And then Auggie turned left, and Annie waited until he found the door that she'd slammed and walked into the room beyond before she started to breathe again.

* * *

Annie didn't start running again until she was five corridors away from where she'd last seen Auggie. Maybe he would still be able to hear her, but hopefully the headstart was enough. Of course, she didn't know where she was running _to_. So far, the only plan she had formed was _get away_. Everything was upside down, and Auggie had been right, he'd been so right when he'd told her never to trust anyone. She'd been almost hurt at the time, but that was nothing to how she was feeling now.

She was almost sprinting when a door opened in front of her, and she knew she wouldn't have time to stop, was adjusting her course to try and steer round the obstacle, when a hand shot out and grabbed her, hauling her inside the room and closing the door behind her. She spun, wrenching her arm out of the grip of her assailant and coming round, thrusting the heel of her hand sharply up and feeling the crunch of contact with someone's face. She didn't waste time, following up with a punch to the jaw and spinning again, lunging for the goon's wrist to flip him and gun, gun, he was holding a gun.

Annie's fingers closed around the guy's wrist, but he brought his other arm up and around her throat, pulling her body tight against his.

"Annie, it's me," he said, and she recognised the voice – _Duarte_ - but right now the only rule she was playing by was _trust no-one_, and she let herself relax in his grip, felt him relax, too, felt his arm loosen, and then she darted forward, grabbing his forearm and using her weight as a pivot to swing him round and into the wall. She crowded right up into his face before he had time to recover, gripping his wrist with both hands and squeezing, slamming his hand against the wall over and over until his fingers loosened and the gun fell to the floor.

"Annie," he said again, and she stepped backward, grabbing the gun and raising it until he was firmly in her sights.

"Don't move," she said, and Duarte raised both hands.

"It's me," he said. "It's Kyle."

Annie didn't move. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she asked.

Duarte's expression moved through _confused_ and headed right on to _irritated_. "Oh, come on," he said. "This is getting ridiculous."

"You think so?" Annie raised an eyebrow. "I'm pretty sure this is the least ridiculous thing I've done since I left D.C."

"Look," Duarte said. "You have to believe me-"

"I don't _have_ to do anything," Annie said, aim not wavering. "And you know, I'm actually getting pretty tired of people asking me to trust them without giving me any reason to."

Duarte paused a moment, like he was thinking his way through this. "OK," he said. "You don't trust me, I get that, I do. You don't even know me. But you know Jake."

"I don't know anyone named Jake," Annie said, and Duarte let out a frustrated breath.

"Auggie," he said. "You don't trust me, but Auggie does. Isn't that enough?"

Annie felt her lips curl in a smile that almost hurt. "You're behind the times, Duarte," she said. "Auggie just tried to kill me." It was weird, saying it out loud. She'd thought it would be painful, but it was easy. Auggie tried to kill her. Like it didn't mean anything.

Duarte's eyes widened. "Damn," he said. "I was afraid of that."

"Afraid of what?" Annie asked. "That I'd get away from him and get the drop on you?"

"That he'd find you before I did," Duarte said. "Annie, there's something wrong with him. Dumont did something."

Annie felt her eyes narrow. "I'm starting to think Dumont is the least of my worries," she said, and then pieces started to slot together in her mind. "Where'd you get the gun?" she asked. It was Russian. She'd seen it before, really, really close up.

"One of Dumont's goons," Duarte said.

"He gave it to you?" Annie felt her finger tighten on the trigger.

"No. He was dead." Duarte swallowed. "Jake killed him."

Annie shook her head slowly. "You're working with him," she said, trying to make sense of this, some of it, any of it. _Auggie tried to kill her_.

"No. _No_," Duarte said. "He's broken, Annie, the nanites – Dumont's done something, he's reprogrammed him."

"You have got to be kidding me," Annie said. "Reprogrammed? He's not a _robot_."

"The nanites are an integral part of his neural system," Duarte said, but Annie wasn't falling for this, not again, not after everything that had happened.

"What, so Dumont programmed him to kill his own bodyguard?" she said. "Why would he do that?"

"Maybe he's testing out the program," Duarte said. "Maybe he doesn't think he needs bodyguards now he has Jake. Best guess?" He shrugged a little. "He thinks it's fun."

Annie adjusted her aim a little. "You want to know what I think?" she said. "I think you're the one who thinks this is fun. I think you're the one who's _pushing buttons_. You've got one minute to tell me why I shouldn't just shoot you right here."

"Because I'm on your side," Duarte said, but Annie shook her head, pushing back the pang of hurt at the phrase.

"Wrong answer," she said. "Fifty seconds."

"He's done it before," Duarte said, fast, the words tumbling over one another. "Dumont's messed with the nanites before. Last time he had us all thinking Jake had gone rogue. We had a shoot to kill order out on him, just like you have on me now. It was _just like now_, Annie."

"Thirty seconds," Annie said, anger and fear curdling in a sick lump in her stomach. She'd never shot a man in cold blood before, but all she could think of was how Auggie wasn't on her side, never had been, and neither was Joan, neither was the agency, how there was nobody on her side but herself. "You might want to try the truth."

Duarte shook his head. "It is the truth," he said, sweat beading on his upper lip. "He erased Jake's memory, told him he was someone else. He turned us all against each other."

"What?" Annie blinked, because for the first time since (_Auggie tried to kill her_) this conversation started, here was something that felt like it was familiar, like it fitted with something she already knew.

"It's the truth," Duarte said, but Annie wasn't listening.

"He erased his memory?" she said, and Duarte swallowed.

"I know, I _know_ it sounds absurd, but-" he said, but Annie broke in.

"He joined a cage-fighting ring," she said, and Duarte stopped, stared.

"He told you about that?" he said.

Annie blinked again, and Duarte straightened up a little. "Please," he said. "Think about it. You _know_ Jake – Auggie. You know Auggie. Maybe he hasn't always told you everything, but who a person is isn't what they tell you, it's how they act. Please." He raised his hands a little further. "Just think."

Annie thought. She thought about how Auggie hadn't said a word to her, how he'd been clumsy, uncoordinated in a way Auggie never was, even when he wasn't using the nanites. She thought about how he'd been unfocussed, not just his eyes, but his whole face, how he hadn't seen moves coming even when he was the one who'd taught them to her. She thought about how he'd lied to her, how he'd been lying to her this whole time, but how even so, even after he'd told her the truth, he was Auggie, he was still _Auggie_.

The person she'd seen out in the corridor, though, the person who tried to kill her. She didn't know who that person was.

"How do we fix it?" she asked, and Duarte's whole body sagged, his eyes closing for a second. Then he drew in a deep breath and straightened up, hands still raised.

"Are you going to stop pointing that thing at me?" he asked.

"No," Annie said. "Tell me how we fix it."

Duarte sighed. "OK," he said. "OK." He paused, like he was working something through. "The nanites basically have two processing spaces. There's the core set of programs at the base, and then there's a higher-level space for additional programming and calling functions. That's the space Jake uses when he asks the nanites to interface with a computer or hear something really quiet, and that'll be where Dumont's program will be stored. It's kind of like the difference between the conscious mind and the subconscious. We need to override the conscious part so that Jake can reassert control and reprogram it."

"So we need to knock the nanites unconscious?" Annie asked.

"Right," Duarte said. "The core functions automatically override any higher-level programming in certain types of situation, like instincts," Duarte said. "I'm pretty sure that if we can get a critical mass of nanites performing core functions, the program will be broken, at least until those processes are complete."

"OK," Annie said, thinking fast. "What situations?"

Duarte shook his head. "You're not going to like it," he said. "You need to give me the gun."

Annie felt all her attention snap to Duarte. "No," she said.

Duarte sighed. "Then you're _really_ not going to like it," he said.

* * *

It might have been Annie shouting that brought Auggie to them. It might have been Duarte pleading with her, voice rising to make itself heard over her denial. And then again, Auggie might have found them eventually anyway. Whatever the case, it was definitely the argument that stopped them from hearing his footsteps, that meant that the first moment they were aware of his presence was when the metal door clanged against the wall and there he was, standing in the doorway, face slack, a fresh smear of blood on his upper lip, listening.

Annie stopped mid-word, her mouth still open, the _I can't_ evaporating in air that suddenly felt freezing cold. Duarte froze, still pressed against the wall, hands raised. Neither of them was breathing, and for a second, there was absolute stillness.

Auggie blinked, his head turning slowly from side to side, and Annie stared at him, at the jerky movements, the blank face. She wondered if it was worse, that she'd thought that this was really him, if her not being able to tell was worse somehow than him lying to her about who he was, about who _she_ was. Her arms ached from holding up the gun, and she was tired, she was so, so tired of all this.

Maybe she made a noise, or maybe Auggie just heard her heart thundering in her chest, but his head swung round and he took a step toward her. She danced back, lightly, staying on the balls of her feet, but no matter how quiet she was, she couldn't beat technologically enhanced hearing. Auggie took another step, more confident this time, moving toward her, and Annie dodged and moved and knew that this time, she wasn't going to win the fight. Auggie swiped a hand out toward her, almost catching her sleeve, and then Duarte started shouting.

"Hey," he yelled. "Hey, Jake. Over here!"

Auggie stopped short, and then turned with a jerk, moving faster now, headed straight for Duarte. He threw a punch, but Duarte had started ducking almost before he'd finished speaking, and all Auggie's fist connected with was the wall, plaster and rubble cascading out of the hole the impact made. Duarte slipped out of reach, sliding along the wall, and Auggie turned, following the sound of his footsteps. Duarte was fast, but Auggie was faster, and Annie found herself stepping forward without thinking.

"Auggie," she called, and Auggie stopped again, spinning, heading in the direction of her voice. Annie backed against the wall and saw, too late, the splintered workbench that blocked her way back out. She slid sideways, but Auggie was too close, and she was running out of space. She was aware of Duarte yelling, but Auggie wasn't taking the bait this time, he was reaching for her and there was nowhere left to go.

Auggie's fingers were inches from Annie's face when Duarte barrelled into him, grabbing him by the arm and shoulder and hauling, using his momentum to swing Auggie round. Auggie stumbled, spinning away from Annie, and grabbed back, gripping Duarte's forearm and using his own body as a pivot, swinging Duarte into the wall like a rag doll. Annie felt the crunch of the impact in her spine and stomach, and she was aware she was speaking, yelling at Auggie, but all she could hear was the blood pounding in her ears.

Duarte slid to the floor and rolled over, spitting out blood, but Auggie wasn't done. He bent down, picking Duarte up by the throat, and Annie could see his fingers flexing, crushing Duarte's windpipe. Duarte's eyes met hers, his mouth moving soundlessly, but she knew what he was asking for, what he was trying to say, and she lifted the gun, aiming it at Auggie's back, below the heart.

"I can't," she said, but she couldn't even hear herself saying it, and Duarte's eyes were rolling up in his head.

She pulled the trigger.

* * *

Right. I shall now commence hiding from the angry mob. Because, y'know, I figured the last cliffhanger wasn't cruel enough.


	7. Chapter 7

Phew! It's finally the end. Brace yourselves, folks - this chapter is a long one. Thank you to everyone who read along with me, and especially to those who commented. I hope you enjoy the ending!

oOoOo

**Retrieval**

Chapter Seven

The impact of the bullet sent Auggie stumbling forward, his grip on Duarte's throat loosening. Duarte dropped, dancing out of Auggie's reach almost before his feet hit the ground, but Auggie wasn't reaching out for him, he was just falling forward, stumbling in a slow-motion topple to his hands and knees. Blood was spreading across his back from the bullet wound (_a lung, that's a lung, please God let it not be his heart_), and the gun felt like it was made of lead in Annie's hand.

"Auggie," she said, taking a step toward him, but Duarte raised a hand.

"Wait," he said, his voice rough but steady. "Wait."

Annie stopped, hand half outstretched, staring at Auggie on his hands and knees on the floor. A string of bloody saliva dripping from his lips, and his mouth gaped like he couldn't get enough air. How could she wait?

"Kyle?" Auggie sounded like he was talking through gravel. "Annie?"

"Oh, thank God," Annie said, or maybe she just thought it. Whichever it was, she had dropped the gun and was on her knees beside Auggie before she was aware that she was moving, easing him into a sitting position, leaning him gently against the wall. Duarte was there, too, pulling off the shredded remains of his jacket and wadding it up, pressing it against the bullet hole in Auggie's back.

"It's OK," Duarte said. "You're going to be fine." Annie wasn't sure who he was trying to convince. She'd seen people look less _OK_ than Auggie, but none of them had ever been _fine_.

"Shot me?" Auggie said, fumbling for Annie's forearm. He coughed, grimaced, blood staining his lips.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It needed to be serious, for critical mass." She was aware she wasn't making a whole lot of sense, but it was hard to concentrate when Auggie was dying in front of her, when she'd just shot Auggie, _shot_ him.

Auggie blinked, fingers flexing around Annie's arm. "...what?" he said, the word forming twice on his lips before he managed to choke it out.

"Dumont reprogrammed the nanites," said Duarte, and Auggie's head turned in the direction of his voice. "We needed to invoke the core programming to override it."

Auggie blinked. "I remember," he said, and then closed his eyes.

"Auggie?" said Annie, but the grip on her forearm was still strong, almost painful.

"Jake, wake up," Duarte said, shaking Auggie's shoulder gently. "We need you to strip out Dumont's program." He pulled his jacket away from Auggie's back, grimacing at the black slick of blood and exchanging a glance with Annie.

"Not sleeping," Auggie said, eyes still closed. "I can't."

"Can't?" Duarte frowned. "Can't what?"

"Strip the... program," Auggie said. His breath was crackling in his lungs, now, and Annie swallowed, willing the nanites to get the hell on with their healing thing. _You'll be OK. Duarte said you'd be fine._ "Has to be external. Blood."

"Blood?" Duarte shifted, pressing the jacket harder on Auggie's back, and Auggie's breath whistled through his gritted teeth, his hand tightening painfully on Annie's arm.

"Extraction. Reinjection," he said, and coughed again. "The... nanites spread the... pr, the pr-" His voice petered out, and Annie stared at Duarte.

"He's not healing," she said. _He's not healing, oh my God._ "You said he'd heal."

Duarte shook his head, and if he was faking the growing fear on his face, he was doing a damn good job. "I don't understand," he said. "Jake, what is this?"

Auggie's lips moved silently, then he swallowed hard and opened his eyes.

"Shut them off," he said. "No more Dumont... in my head."

"_What?_" Annie and Duarte said it simultaneously. "You'll die," Annie said, and Auggie leaned his head back against the wall.

"Better dead than led," he said, eyes sliding closed again.

Duarte leaned forward, grabbing Auggie's shoulder with his free hand. "Don't be stupid," he said. "I'm ordering you to bring the nanites back online."

Auggie's lips curled in a painful smile, bloody teeth turning Annie's stomach. "You're not the boss of me," he whispered, and then his jaw went slack, breath wheezing in and out of his throat, too shallow, too slow.

"Jake," said Duarte. "_Jake_."

"You said this would work," Annie said. She shot Auggie, she trusted Duarte and she shot Auggie, and now he was going to die.

"I didn't know he would shut the damn nanites down," Duarte said, slapping Auggie's cheek. "Come on, come on, wake up."

"Duarte," Annie said, feeling her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth, but Duarte wasn't paying attention. He was shaking Auggie, harder now, Auggie's head lolling like there were no bones in his neck. Annie reached over - her hand was shaking, God - and grabbed Duarte's arm.

"Check his wound," she said, and Duarte frowned and pulled the jacket away. The blood was still there, but it was half-dry, the flow of fresh blood slowed to a trickle.

Annie breathed out slowly. She hadn't imagined the way that Auggie's breathing was coming a little easier. "He's healing," she said.

Duarte frowned, then his face cleared. "Of course," he said. "If the higher-level programming's shut down, Jake can't control the nanites any more than Dumont's program can. He _can't_ shut them down." He broke into a grin, and Annie felt like her internal organs were liquefying with relief.

"Shit," she said, looking at Auggie's face. He looked pale and sick, his mouth messy with drying blood, but he was breathing, he was alive. They were all alive.

Auggie's eyes moved under the lids, his breathing almost clear now, and Duarte suddenly grabbed Annie's arm.

"He's waking up," he said. "Annie, we have to move."

Annie stared at him, not understanding for a moment. Then she remembered what _healing_ meant: it meant no more emergency, no more critical mass. It meant Auggie was gone again.

She struggled to her feet, diving for the gun she'd abandoned on the floor, grabbing it without breaking her stride. Behind her, she heard Auggie shift. They had to _go_.

_You'll be OK_, she thought, not daring to take the time to glance back. _I promise, we'll make this OK._

And they ran.

oOoOo

Annie lost count of the number of turns they made into almost identical concrete-floored corridors. She hoped they weren't somehow doubling back on themselves, but after ten minutes of running, she was pretty sure that Duarte didn't have any more idea where they were going than she did. And hey, it wasn't that she disliked running, but suit pants weren't really ideal for cardio. Duarte made another left turn, and she turned with him, grabbing his arm as they rounded the corner and pulling them both flat against the wall.

"What are you doing?" Duarte asked.

"We can't just keep running," Annie said. "We need a plan."

"Great," Duarte said. "I'm thinking get back to the mine and regroup."

Annie shook her head. "Too risky," she said. "The longer we're out here, the more time Dumont has to screw with us. We need to get Auggie back."

"You heard what he said," Duarte said. "We can't reprogram him without getting his blood. And getting his blood means getting close to him, which lately seems to mean getting our necks snapped."

Annie shook her head. "Then we have to knock him out somehow," she said.

"How?" Duarte said. "Shoot him again?"

A thought clicked into place in Annie's head. "No," she said. "I think there's another way."

Duarte raised his eyebrows at her, and she felt a smile form on her lips. "Dumont likes pushing buttons, right?" she said. "Well, two can play at that game."

oOoOo

The room with the electromagnet was just as Annie remembered, only this time, her mind was clearer, this time she understood what was going on. As she pushed the door open, she had a momentary flash of what would have happened if Dumont had been right, if she had been filled with thousands of tiny machines when the magnet turned on. She pushed it away. There was no time for _what if_.

Annie took three steps inside the room and stopped, feeling the back of her throat go dry. Something hard and cold was pressed against her temple, and she'd been in this situation often enough before to know that it was the barrel of a gun.

"Annie Walker," said Dumont's voice from behind her. "I wondered if I would see you again."

Annie took a deep breath, raising her hands. All her attention focussed on the gun, the unyielding pressure, the fact that she knew the the man holding it would pull the trigger without giving it a second thought if she took one wrong step. It felt like everything in her life had been leading up to this moment, and it was clear now that coffee had nothing to do with it, that there was nothing random about this at all. She'd given Dumont all the power he needed, and it was up to her to make sure he used it the way she wanted him to.

"I'm glad I found you," she said.

"Really." Dumont didn't sound convinced. "To be honest, I thought Jake would find _you_. Guess being blind really does suck."

"He did find me," Annie said. "I killed him."

There was a pause, and then the pressure of the gun disappeared, a phantom coldness still digging into Annie's skin. Dumont appeared in front of her, gun aimed at her chest. "How?" he said.

Annie glanced sideways at the dried blood that coated her hands. Auggie's blood. "You were right," she said.

"About what?" Dumont's eyes were narrowed.

"Everything." Annie swallowed. "I do have nanites. That's how I was able to kill him. They're more advanced than his."

Triumph twitched at the corners of Dumont's lips. "I knew it," he said.

"And you were right about... about me being owned," Annie said. "I was OK with it for a while, but when I saw what they did to Jake..." she let her voice trail off, shifting her weight like she was nervous. Which actually didn't require a whole lot of acting talent on her part, but whatever. "I don't think I can live like that. Die like that."

Dumont was nodding. "I knew from the moment I read your file," he said. "Jake was always a drone, even before he had the nanites, but _you_. All that time travelling, completely free, and then you sign on to be a puppet for the Man? I don't think so." He was full-on smirking now. Annie really hoped she would get to punch him in the face before all this was over. "We have a lot in common, Annie Walker."

"So what happens now?" Annie asked, trying to ignore the way her stomach felt greasy at his last words. "Can you find a way to hide me?"

"Hide you?" Dumont shook his head. "Oh, Annie. They've really got inside your head, haven't they?" He took a step closer, not lowering the gun, but she saw that he was holding something else, now, something small and black that looked a lot like the device he'd used in the mine. _Bingo_. "Think about it. You're the world's most advanced human being. The next step in evolution. Why would you want to hide?"

"The CIA-" Annie started, but Dumont laughed.

"They're insects," he said. "They have this technology, this spectacular creation, and they use it for, what? Secret assassinations? Maintaining the status quo? They've built a society based on fear, but you don't have to be afraid any more."

Annie stared at him, thinking fast. Dumont was crazy, frightening, but he wasn't irrational. She could use that. She would use it.

"One person against the entire government?" she said. "Come on, Dumont."

Dumont's smirk faded slightly. "I thought you would have more imagination than that," he said. "This isn't about running some pathetic clandestine operation to take down the CIA. This is about a new world order, Annie." He gestured with the device, and Annie watched it, straining her ears for any sound in the corridor. "It's going to be a whole new ball game and people like you and me? We're going to be the ones calling the shots."

Annie shook her head. "How? I can't just give you the nanites."

"O ye of little faith," Dumont said. "All I need is some of your blood. You'll do that for me, won't you?" He glanced towards the corner of the room, and Annie followed his eyes, noticed a computer surrounded by detritus, test tubes, hypodermic syringes. She swallowed and nodded. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the sound of footsteps.

Dumont was moving backward toward the computer, gun still trained on her, and Annie counted in her head, listening to the footsteps coming closer, moving fast, running. _One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi._

"There's just one more thing," she said, and Dumont frowned at her.

"What?" he asked, and Annie knew that he must have heard the footsteps by now.

"This," she said, and launched herself forward, tackling Dumont around the waist. The gun went off, but Annie knew she was well under the firing line, and then both of them were falling, and for a second she thought she'd miscalculated, that he wasn't going to use the device on her, that they would have to shoot Auggie after all.

Then there was a blinding pain in her head, and she almost wished it hadn't worked after all.

Somehow she managed to roll off Dumont, curling herself round, fists in her hair, eyes squeezed shut. She was aware of noises outside her head - yelling, a gunshot - but none of it was important. The only important thing was that something was turning her brain inside out, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Bright blotches sparkled on the backs of her eyelids, and she felt herself begin to pass out.

And then someone was shaking her, hard. "Annie," said a voice, echoing and unclear, like the speaker was underwater. "There isn't time for this. You need to wake up."

She tried to unstick her eyelids, but the light stabbed through her eyes and into her brain, sharp as glass. "Jesus," she muttered, and the shaking became more insistent.

"I know it hurts, but I don't know how long we have," came the voice - _Duarte_ - and she struggled to put the words together into some kind of meaningful thought. _I don't know how long we have._ What were they doing? Why was she-

-_Auggie_.

Annie grabbed Duarte's arm and hauled, managing to make it to a sitting position and then pausing, swallowing over and over to try and ride out the nausea. On the third try, she managed to open her eyes. Duarte's face filled her vision, haloed in red, white lights sparkling here and there on his skin.

"...Auggie?" she managed, and Duarte moved aside, grimacing slightly. Beyond him, she saw Auggie in a heap on the floor, like all his strings had been cut. Beyond _that_ was Dumont, unconscious, blood trickling from his nose.

"We have to figure out how to reprogram him before he wakes up," Duarte said. "I don't want to have to knock him out again. If it's affecting you this strongly, who knows what it's doing to him."

Annie blinked a couple times and focussed on breathing in and out. Reprogram. They had to reprogram Auggie.

"OK," she said, voice sounding weak even in her own ears. "Help me up."

Duarte held out an arm, and she leaned on it, pulling herself to her feet. Duarte winced again, and Annie frowned, her eyes travelling up his arm and across to his other shoulder.

Blood.

"What happened?" she asked, reaching out with the hand that wasn't clutching Duarte's arm, Her own injured shoulder complained, but she ignored it. A little sprain between friends seemed like the worst of their worries right now.

Duarte glanced down at his injury. "Shot," he said. "It's just a graze. Dumont may be the world's greatest hacker, but his aim is terrible."

Annie breathed in, swallowed. The sparkling lights were starting to fade, now, but the pounding pain in her head wasn't going anywhere fast. "You going to be OK?"

"That depends on whether we can reprogram Jake before he tries to rip my head off again," said Duarte. "He nearly caught me when I was leading him here. I didn't think he'd be able to move so fast without being able to see."

Annie started to nod, then stopped when that set off a really unpleasant firework display in her head. "Dumont said that computer could do it," she said, letting go of Duarte's arm. She didn't fall down, which she considered to be a pretty awesome victory right now. As soon as they got out of here, she was going to burn whatever the device was that made her feel this way. Burn it and spread the ashes over the Potomac. Or maybe just burn the ashes again. "We need the blood."

"I got it," said Duarte, starting towards the computer. Halfway there, he stopped, head cocked, listening. "You hear that?"

Annie tried to hear anything through the buzzing in her ears. No go. "What?"

"Someone's coming," said Duarte, and pulled out his gun, headed for the door. Annie tried to remember who else there might be in the building. One of Dumont's goons was dead, but the other one...

Crap.

"You get the blood," said Duarte, and slipped out of the door. Annie turned, clinging to the table the computer sat on and surveying the wreckage of hypodermics, glassware and unconscious men that lay before her.

"Great," she muttered, and reached for the nearest syringe.

oOoOo

As it turned out, getting the blood out of Auggie was pretty straightforward, even though when Annie leaned down to slide the needle into his arm she thought she might pass out. Figuring out how the blood was supposed to plug into the computer, however, was like some bizarre super-complicated space-age version of those children's games where you slot a shape into the corresponding hole. There was a weird-looking piece of equipment attached via a cable to the main body of the computer, and Annie figured that was probably what she was going for, but she slid the test-tube into five different long, narrow spaces before she found one that clicked. It didn't help that there were definite sounds of a fight outside the door. Duarte could take care of himself, she reminded herself, and just hoped that it was true.

Once the blood was in place, she tapped the keyboard, and the computer screen came to life. This was the part she was pretty much freaked out about, because she wasn't exactly the most tech-savvy person out there. "Dammit, Auggie," she muttered as a prompt appeared on the screen. "I could really use you right now."

_New input detected_, the prompt informed her. _Scan?_

She pressed the _y_ key, and the cursor blinked at her for a second before a new prompt appeared. _Link created_, it read. _Press 1 to upload new program. Press 2 to read source. Press 3 to return to factory settings. Press 4 to quit._

_Factory settings?_ Annie held her breath and pressed 3. Nothing happened for a second, then more text unfolded on the screen. _Factory settings restored,_ it read, and then Annie didn't have time to read the rest, because Duarte abruptly reappeared, crashing backwards through the half-open door, landing hard on the floor. Dumont's goon appeared in the doorway, his attention focussed on Duarte for the moment, and Annie ducked behind the computer desk, reaching up to snag the test tube as the goon grabbed Duarte and slammed him against the wall.

_Shit_. Hands shaking, Annie relaoded the blood in the hypodermic and crawled toward Auggie's prone body, hoping like hell that what she'd done was correct. What did _factory settings_ mean in this case, anyway? What the hell kind of factory made tiny robots that give you super strength?

Duarte was gaining the upper hand as Annie reached Auggie, and she was just about to inkect the blood back into Auggie's arm when he sent Dumont's goon flying. The guy stumbled backward and tripped over Auggie's outstretched legs, landing hard on his ass and blinking, his attention turning to Annie and Auggie for the first time. He growled, getting to his feet, and Annie started to rise, too, ready to defend them both, but Duarte got there first, cannoning into the goon and knocking him off balance again.

"Get him out of the way," he yelled to Annie, and Annie nodded, stowing the blood in her pants pocket and grabbing Auggie under the armpits, dragging him into the shelter of a low-ceilinged corner, just before Duarte went crashing back across the space they'd been in moments before.

"This better work," Annie muttered, keeping one eye on the carnage outside as she retrieved the blood from her pocket. She peered at it a second. It didn't _look_ any different from normal blood. The idea that it was swarming with invisible machines was - well, OK, it was creepy enough that she was going to stop thinking about it now. She shook her head, trying to clear some of the fog that still lingered, and grabbed Auggie's arm, pressing her thumb down on his elbow to bring up a vein. Sliding the needle in, she depressed the plunger and held her breath. What if _factory settings_ was even more homicidal than before? What if it made him into a zombie? What if-

A shadow fell across her, interrupting her thoughts, and she looked up sharply to see Dumont standing in the entryway to the corner she'd found, hand on a lever protruding from the wall, bleeding lips turned up in a grin.

"Nice knowing you, Jake," he said, and that was when Annie realised where she was, where _Auggie_ was.

They were inside the electromagnet.

There wasn't time to think. Annie launched herself at Dumont just as he flipped the switch, the walls beginning to hum around her _oh God they're humming oh God_, and she made contact a second later, the force of her forward momentum sending Dumont flying. This time, though, Annie didn't keep hold of him, even though all she really wanted to do was pound his head into the concrete floor for what he'd done, for what he'd been doing all along. The humming was ramping up, and Annie grabbed hold of the doorframe, using it as a pivot to arrest her motion and spin her back round, reaching for the lever as her stomach gave an unpleasant lurch and the pain in her head intensified a notch. She slammed her hand down, flipping the switch off, and skidded to her knees beside Auggie as the humming began to die away.

"Auggie," she said. "_Auggie_." His face was twisted in pain, eyes open now, but glassy, rolling wildly. Oh God.

"Come on," she said. "Come on, talk to me. You're OK. You've got to be OK." Except he didn't have to be OK. Except he'd been reprogrammed and shot and returned to factory settings and hit with a powerful electromagnet, and she had no idea what kind of effect any of that would have on what was inside of him.

But he had to be OK. She'd promised that he would be.

"Auggie," she said again, shaking him a little, and then Auggie blinked, lips moving a little. Outside, there was a noise that sounded like a body hitting a wall, and Annie shook Auggie again.

"Annie?" Auggie said, and if Annie hadn't already been on her knees she might have fallen down with relief.

"Yeah. Yes. Auggie, it's me. Are you OK?"

Auggie's hand found her arm, and he rolled his head to one side, frowning.

"Can I take it from the soundtrack that there's a fist fight going on somewhere nearby?" he said, and Annie felt a smile start to form on her lips.

"That's an accurate summary of the situation," she said.

"Right." Auggie nodded, and used her arm to heave himself into a sitting situation. "Point me at the bad guy."

Annie was all-out grinning now, and she helped Auggie to his feet and guided him forward. Outside the magnet chamber, Duarte was in a heap on the floor, the goon advancing on him, and Annie pointed Auggie in that direction and pushed.

"He's a big guy," she said. "Be careful."

Auggie shot her a grin. "I used to be a cage fighter, you know," he said, and took three steps forward, hands outstretched, until he made contact with the goon's back. The goon span, already swinging, and Auggie took a hard punch to the jaw, staggering back. For a moment, Annie thought they'd made a serious miscalculation, but then Auggie regained his balance and threw his weight forward, ducking under the punch the goon aimed at him like he'd seen it coming, and a moment later he was hoisting the guy into the air and flinging him like he was made of balsa wood.

The goon smacked into the far wall head-first and slid to the floor, lying still.

"He down?" asked Auggie, barely even breathing heavily.

"Looks like," Annie said, already moving toward Duarte. "You OK?"

"Fine," said Auggie, straightening up as Annie helped a groaning Duarte to his feet. "You two?"

"Feel like a truck hit me," said Annie. "That damn tracker has got to go. Duarte?"

Duarte shook his head. His shoulder was bleeding again, and now he had a new collection of fresh bruises to match.

"Where's Dumont?" he asked.

Annie turned, scanning the room. _Shit_. "He's gone," she said. She tried to calculate how long it was since she'd tackled him, but time wasn't reliable when every second was a life-or-death situation. "He could be anywhere by now."

"We've got to find him," Duarte said, but Auggie shook his head.

"No," he said. "We've got to get out of here."

"Jake-" Duarte said, but Auggie held up his hand.

"I know, OK?" he said. "I know it's not safe to leave him out there. But you two sound like you've been ten rounds with Godzilla, and Dumont knows all my weaknesses. We were lucky this time. Next time one of us is going to end up dead. We'll call the Russians as soon as we get out, but right now, we need to go."

Duarte looked like he was going to argue, but then he sighed, wincing a little. "OK," he said.

"All right," Auggie said. "Where's the computer?"

Annie guided him to it, and he stood for a moment, hands pressed to the hard-drives, face taking on a far-away look. Then he nodded.

"Got everything," he said. "Kill it."

Annie took particular pleasure in dragging the equipment over to the electromagnetic chamber and turning it on. When the humming reached full power, she turned to Auggie and Duarte.

"Let's go," she said.

oOoOo

They'd been on the move for maybe ten minutes when Duarte dropped. One minute he was heading up the group, using the compass to find the main exit, the next he was on the ground, like all the bones in his body had suddenly melted.

Annie stopped moving, tugging on Auggie's arm. "Auggie," she said, but Auggie had already stopped.

"I heard," he said. "He OK?"

Stepping forward, Annie dropped into a crouch, checking Duarte's pulse. "He's breathing," she said. "He took a few knocks to the head. Plus, he was shot."

"_Shot?_" Auggie said. "When were you planning on telling me that?"

"I didn't-" said Annie, but Auggie was shaking his head, moving carefully toward her.

"Never mind," he said. "We can have the argument about intra-agency communication later. Preferably with beer." He bent at the knees, groping hands finding Duarte's body. "Much as I love office politics, I'm kind of busy running for my life right now."

"Can't you just, like," Annie waved her hands over Duarte's body. "I don't know, heal him or something?"

Auggie frowned. "Heal him?"

"You know, with your cyborg powers," said Annie, and Auggie's frown turned incredulous.

"I'm not a _cyborg_," he said. "And nanites don't exactly come equipped with tiny ace bandages and supplies of penicillin, so no, I can't heal him." He found Duarte's torso and picked him up, straightening and throwing Duarte's body over his shoulder like it was a sack of potatoes. A really, really light sack of potatoes.

Annie stood up too. "You totally are a cyborg," she said.

Auggie rolled his eyes. "Let's leave the exact definition of what I am until I get that beer," he said, and presented his arm to Annie. "Come with me if you want to live."

-oOoOo

There were two jeeps parked outside the north entrance of the factory. Auggie handed Annie a switchblade, and she jimmied her way into the first with no issues.

"Hotwire first," said Auggie, laying Duarte in the back. "Slash the tires of the other one after."

Annie nodded and reached under the dash, wrenching on the plastic until it gave way. She found the right wires without too much trouble, and she was beginning to think they were going to get clear away when Auggie slid into the seat next to her, face set.

"Someone's coming," he said, and a second later the factory door swung open. Annie cursed and redoubled her efforts, the engine coughing into life just as Dumont's goon appeared.

"Go," said Auggie, "_go_," and Annie wrenched the steering wheel round, turning in a tight circle as gunfire exploded around the tires.

"Duarte said there was an airfield north-east of the mine," she said, flipping the headlights on to high beam and flooring the gas.

"Great," said Auggie. "You think you can find it?"

"Guess we'll find out." Annie swerved to avoid a tree looming out of the darkness. Behind her, the headlights of the other jeep burst into life. "Maybe we should've slashed the tires first."

"Maybe we should've just set fire to it," Auggie said, grunting as a particularly sharp turn threw him against the door.

"Sorry, sorry," said Annie, hoping the fact that the road was leading north-east was a good sign.

"Not a problem," said Auggie, fumbling for the seatbelt. "Remind me never to get in a car with you again, by the way."

"Hey, it's not like you could do any better," Annie said, and then they were through the trees and driving on cracked asphalt, the headlights illuminating a broad stretch of flat land and a small jet. "Oh, thank God," said Annie, stamping on the brakes and sending Auggie flying into the dash.

"I take it we're here," he said.

"Come on," Annie replied, flinging her door open and jumping out. The headlights behind them were still in among the trees, but they were coming up fast. By the time Annie was round the jeep, Auggie was already out and lifting Duarte's unconscious body.

"There's a plane?" he said, and Annie grabbed his hand and tugged him over to the sleek grey jet, steps already set up beside it.

"How are we going to get in?" she asked, but the door yielded when she turned the handle. Which was weird, if you thought about it, but Annie didn't have time to think. She half-sprinted into the cockpit, sliding into the pilot's seat while Auggie stowed Duarte in the back.

"OK," she said, and then frowned. Huh. This wasn't at all like the set up of the flight simulator she'd practised on at the Farm. For one thing, all the dials and readouts were missing, replaced by a large LCD screen and a keyboard.

Computers. Annie would actually be pretty happy if she never had to deal with them again. It turned out, finding out her friend was part-machine was enough to make her into a candidate for the next Unabomber. She shook her head and pressed the _enter_ key.

_Enter Password_, read the screen, and Annie stared at the blinking cursor. _Password?_ What kind of plane has a _password_?

There was the sound of screeching brakes from outside, and Auggie slid into the seat beside her. "I don't want to hurry you or anything," he said, "but I'm pretty sure there are guys with guns headed this way."

_Shit_. Annie typed the first word she could think of, hoping like hell that getting it wrong wouldn't blow up the plane or something. The screen went blank for a second, and Annie closed her eyes and wondered if she would see her life flash before her eyes, and if so, whether there was any way she could skip ninth grade.

Nothing happened. Annie opened her eyes again. There was a new message on the screen. _Press Enter to start engines_.

"Uh," said Auggie. "I was serious about the guys with guns, by the way."

Annie lunged forward, slamming her finger on the enter key so hard she was surprised she didn't break it. The engines hummed into life and Annie gave it as much gas as she could, ducking instinctively as a bullet whined past the fuselage.

"Hold on," she said to Auggie, and pulled back on the controls, lifting the nose of the plane off the ground. Another bullet ricocheted off the landing gear, setting the plane slightly at an angle as it lifted off the ground, and Annie fought to right it even as she was pulling up as sharply as she could.

And then they were in the air, banking steeply above the battered runway and heading out over the endless black of the forest. The only signs of human life were the two sets of headlights below, and even they were quickly swallowed up amongst the trees.

"We made it," Auggie said, and Annie breathed out. The giant screen was full of digital readouts: altitude, speed, direction, position. Everything was within safe parameters.

They made it.

"Scandinavia's a lot more exciting than I gave it credit for," she said, and Auggie snorted.

"Fjords, elk, crazy megalomaniacal hackers," he said. "I'm amazed it's not tourist destination of the year."

Annie grinned, feeling the nausea that came after way too much adrenaline. They were alive, and she really wanted to just concentrate on that fact and be happy, but now that they had space to breathe, everything else was crowding in on her. Auggie wasn't Auggie - or he was, but he was Jake as well. Ben was a rogue CIA agent. Joan and Arthur were using her. Nothing was the same as it had been when she'd flown into Helsinki just a few days before.

"You OK?" Auggie asked, and Annie glanced over at him. His head was turned in her direction, eyes squinting half-closed like he did when he was concerned, like he was straining to see inside her head.

"Yeah," Annie said. "I just..." She turned back to face front, glancing at the readouts on the screen. "I don't know if I can go back, you know? I mean, how do I work there every day, knowing what I know now?"

Auggie paused before answering. "Maybe you can't," he said. "You're the only one who can make that decision. But you're a good agent, Annie. I'd hate to lose you."

Annie shook her head. "I'm not an agent," she said. "I'm just bait."

"No," Auggie said, hand reaching out for her, settling on her shoulder. "You're not. You don't have to be what they think you are. The only thing that's changed about you is how much you know."

Annie bit her lip, grateful for the warmth of Auggie's hand, but not convinced. Auggie sighed.

"Listen," he said, shifting slightly in his seat so his whole body was turned towards her. "Intelligence agencies are dirty places full of dirty people. There are two things you need to do to survive."

Shaking her head a little, Annie glanced at him again. "What two things?"

"Number one," said Auggie holding up a finger, "you need to know what they have on you. And number two," a second finger, "you need to remember who you were before you signed up."

Annie let that sink in for a moment. "That's all?" she said. "Just two things?"

"Well," Auggie said, grinning a little, "a healthy disregard for following orders doesn't go amiss, either."

"Right," said Annie. "So, I'm assuming Joan doesn't know you're here?"

"I'm not here," said Auggie. "I'm sick. Don't I look sick?"

Annie looked over at him. His upper lip and chin were dark with dried blood, his tattered shirt stiff with it. "Actually, you look like hell," she said.

"Hey, no fair picking on the guy who can't use a mirror," said Auggie, squeezing her shoulder lightly, and Annie grinned and was reaching out to give him an answering squeeze on the arm when something on the computer screen caught her attention.

"Uh, Auggie?" she said.

"What?" Auggie caught the worried note in her voice and sat up straighter. "What is it?"

"It's the numbers," Annie said. "They've gone haywire."

"Haywire?" Auggie reached out a hand, fingers finding the screen. "Wait, the plane's computerised? What numbers?"

"All of them," Annie said, staring as the numbers changed rapidly on the screen. "Everything that tells me where we are, where we're going, how high we are. I'm flying blind."

"Can't you just look out of the window?" Auggie asked, grabbing the dash.

"It's night time," said Annie.

"Oh." Auggie's fingers flexed on the dash, and then a frown of concentration spread across his face. Annie found herself gripping the controls so hard she thought the plastic might crack. This part of Scandinavia was pretty flat, right? Pretty flat. It was really pretty unlikely that they were going to fly into a mountain. It'd have to be an undiscovered mountain, and the chances of that happening were - well, Annie didn't know what they were, and she didn't really have the mental space for statistics right now anyway. The point was, as long as she kept them level-

"It's a virus," said Auggie, blinking and pulling his hands away from the dash like they'd been burned. "Dumont. Was there a password to get into the system?"

"Um, yeah," said Annie, feeling her palms slipping slightly on the controls, slick with sweat. "But I just entered _password_ and it worked, so-"

"_Password_?" said Auggie, voice rising sharply. "Dumont's one of the best hackers in the world, his password isn't going to be _password_."

"It worked," said Annie, feeling the nausea in her stomach ramp up.

"Apparently not," said Auggie, hands going back to the dash. "He must've booby trapped it in case it got stolen. Great way to make sure thieves don't get away with it."

"Great way to lose a plane," Annie said, feeling sweat start to trickle down her neck. How fast were they travelling? God, she hoped she was right about the mountains.

"Yeah, well, Dumont's not exactly hurting for money to buy new planes," said Augge, and then shook his head. "I can't fix the connections, the virus burned them out." He took a deep breath and his face took on a faraway look that was starting to become unpleasantly familiar.

"What are you doing?" Annie asked.

"Looking for a radar station that's tracking us," Auggie said, the lines on his face tightening. "If I can grab the data from their computer and feed it to this one..." he trailed off, jaw clamping shut.

"Can you even do that?" said Annie. "It's gotta be miles away. Oh, hey, it's working."

Auggie didn't reply. The numbers on the screen had returned to something approaching normality, but blood was oozing from his nose again. No, not oozing, _flowing_. Hell, maybe even _gushing_. _Shit_. Annie started searching frantically for a place to land, but there was nothing, just trees and trees and more freaking trees. What she wouldn't give for some napalm right now.

"Auggie," she said, turning the plane to head north. Northern Scandinavia was just bare tundra, right? No trees there. "Auggie, come on, talk to me, let me know you're still in there."

There was no answer, and Annie felt her own jaw tightening. She couldn't fly the plane without Auggie doing what he was doing, but at the same time, she was pretty sure that friends don't let friends bleed out through the nose while their brain gets eaten alive by microscopic machines. One thing she was definitely sure of: life had been a hell of a lot simpler before she'd know what _nanites_ meant.

As it turned out, Dumont's virus made the choice for her. Flying using the numbers that Auggie was projecting onto the screen would maybe have worked out just fine, if it hadn't been for the fact that, ten minutes later, the controls started to seize up. At first, Annie thought they were just a little stiff, but as she tugged on them with increasing desperation it became clear that she wasn't in control of the plane any more. And whatever _was_ in control was apparently a big fan of hitting the ground at high speeds.

"Shit," she said, turning to Auggie. He was still blank-faced, fingers white on the dash, but now he was bleeding from the ears as well oh God what was going _on_, and Annie shook him a little by the shoulders, yelling his name.

"_Auggie_," she said, trying for the commanding tone Mom used to use, the one Danielle could bring up without any effort at all. She sounded more terrified than authoritative, though. Maybe that gene only switched on when you got pregnant. "Come on," she said, grabbing one of Auggie's hands and trying to pry his fingers away from the dash. "You're scaring me, here."

Her efforts didn't get very far: Auggie's hands might as well have been welded to the plane for all the give in them, and the muscles in his arms were corded tight, like steel. Hell, for all she knew, he had an adamantium endoskeleton to go with the computer enhanced nervous system. One thing she _did_ know, though, was that blood was starting to trickle out of Auggie's eyes like tears, and she was not OK with that, not OK at _all_.

"OK, that's it," she muttered, and pulled back as far as she could in the narrow space of the cockpit, slugging Auggie full in the face. His head snapped back and then dropped forward, hands coming off the dash to clutch at his temples.

"Frr," he said, and one hand groped out, grabbing Annie's arm, fingers locking around her wrist. "Gonna pass out."

"No," she said. "Auggie, no, I need you to stay awake. We're going to have to jump."

Auggie didn't respond for a long moment, his mouth hanging open slightly. She was just wondering whether she should hit him again when he blinked.

"We're still on the plane?" he said.

_Shit_. Whatever it was he'd been doing with the computer, it had messed him up more than she'd realised. "Yeah, Auggie," she said, trying to keep her voice patient. "We're on the plane, and we're going to have to jump off it. I need you to stay conscious long enough to pull the cord on your parachute, OK?"

No response. Annie waited as long as she could, but she could feel the plane losing altitude. It was going to crash whatever happened - the only thing she could control was whether the three of them were on board when it did.

"OK," she said, squeezing Auggie's hand. "I'll be back."

Finding the parachutes wasn't hard. The tricky thing was that there were three of them on the plane, but only two of them were conscious, and to be honest, even that was pushing it a little. She strapped one chute to herself, hoping like hell that Duarte would come around before they had to jump, and then took a second through to Auggie in the cockpit.

"Here," she said, trying to manipulate his arms into the straps, but after a second or two Auggie started to help her out, his movements clumsy and sluggish, but purposeful. Annie glanced out of the windshield, shuddering at the thought that for all she could see out there, the ground could be five miles or twenty feet away.

"Kyle," said Auggie.

"He's still out," Annie said. "I'll strap him to my chest."

Auggie nodded and struggled to his feet, staggering back into the passenger section of the plane. Annie followed, almost falling as the wings tipped left. By the time she'd righted herself, Auggie had the door open and was standing in front of her, hand reaching out to grip her wrist.

"Promise me," he said, words still slurred. "No hospitals. No Diane."

"What?" Annie stared at him. "What are you talking about?"

"Promise," Auggie said, squeezing her wrist so tight that the bones grated together.

"Ow, Jesus," Annie said, trying to pull her hand away. "OK, OK, I promise!"

Nodding again, Auggie took two steps back and bent down, scooping Duarte off the floor, arms locked around his ribcage.

"Hey!" Annie yelled over the roar of the wind blowing through the open door, but Auggie had already taken the final step and was gone. Annie ran to the doorway, trying not to think about how out of it he'd been, trying not to imagine what would happen if he passed out en route to the grounf before he had a chance to pull his chute-

-down below, the starlight glinted off something large and white and billowy, and Annie closed her eyes for a second in relief.

Then she jumped.

oOoOo

Landing was Annie's least favourite part of skydiving, but to be honest, this entire mission had pretty much been a showcase Annie's least favourite parts of life. At least the ground was relatively soft and she managed not to get too tangled in the trees. More importantly, she was no longer tied up listening to a ranting lunatic, or hiding in an abandoned uranium mine, or on board a falling plane. Relatively speaking, she was doing pretty damn well.

She found Auggie and Duarte a few hundred yards from her landing site in a heap of parachute silk and passed out spooks. Both of them were alive and stable, as far as she could tell, and so she moved them to more comfortable-looking positions and covered them with the parachute before making a fire and collecting some water from the nearby lake. When all the immediate issues were taken care of, she sat and watched for the eastern sky to start to get light.

It had been a really long night.

oOoOo

Duarte woke up just as the sky was starting to get light. Annie was semi-dozing herself, chin on her chest, when she was snapped to wakefulness by a hand landing on her shoulder and found herself looking up into a pare of pale green eyes.

"Easy," said Duarte. "It's just me."

Annie sagged a little. She was stiff and sore from sitting up all night - well, actually, she was probably mainly stiff and sore from being used as a punching bag by at least four different people in the last twenty-four hours, but who was counting, right? - and talking seemed like it required more energy than she really had to spare right now. Duarte dropped down across from her and stirred the embers of the fire with a pine branch.

"Guess the getaway didn't go quite the way we planned it, huh?" he said.

Annie shrugged. Duarte shifted a little. "Where's the plane?"

"Scattered across the country in a thousand pieces by now," said Annie.

Duarte nodded, like that was only to be expected. "And Jake?"

"Sleeping," Annie said. "He used the nanites. I don't really know if he's OK." She didn't bother telling Duarte all the thoughts she'd had about brain damage. She was sure he could fill in the gaps for himself.

Duarte sighed. "Damn nanites," he said. "I should call Diane."

"No," said Annie, and Duarte looked at her, eyebrows raised.

"No?" he said.

"I promised him I wouldn't let you," she said.

Duarte frowned. "That's ridiculous. She could help."

Annie shook her head. "It's what he wants."

Duarte was quiet for a long moment, poking at the fire. Finally, he looked over at her. "You're a CIA agent, though, right?" he said. "Promises shouldn't mean a lot to you."

Annie shrugged. She didn't have the energy to argue, or even to get angry. "If that's what you think, you can always wrestle me for the cell phone," she said.

Duarte regarded her for a moment, then looked away. Annie nodded. "There's no reception anyway," she said.

A smile twitched at the corners of Duarte's mouth. Annie watched it, thinking about all the history she was only just beginning to see, about Duarte and Jake and this Diane person. "What's she like?" she asked, without really meaning to say it out loud. "I mean, you talk about her a lot."

"Diane?" Duarte asked, and when Annie nodded, he blew out a breath. "She's - a good person. She cares for Jake a lot. Cared, I guess." He sighed. "I'm glad she left the agency when she did. It wasn't right for her."

Annie caught an undertone in that and felt her eyes narrowing. "Do you think _I_ should leave the agency?" she said.

Duarte met her eyes. "I think I'm glad Jake's got you watching his back," he said.

Annie remembered what Auggie had said in the plane. _You have to know what they have on you_. Now she knew. Hell, now she knew more than the agency did, about some things at least. Somehow, it didn't make her feel any more secure, but then, maybe _secure_ was exactly the way she shouldn't feel if she was going to be a good agent. _You can never trust anyone._

"Do you think he's happy?" Duarte asked, and Annie blinked.

"Who?" she said.

"Jake," Duarte said. "Auggie."

Annie thought about it. Auggie was usually light-hearted and definitely enjoyed the pleasures of life. But was he happy? "I don't know," she said. "Was he happy before? Is he so different?"

Duarte looked away. "Yeah," he said. "He's - more cynical. More confident." He shrugged. "He's still Jake."

Auggie was still Jake. But Jake was never Auggie. Annie shook her head. "Was he really bad with women?" she asked, and Duarte really did smile now.

"Oh my God," he said. "It was painful."

"Hey," Auggie called out from where he was lying a little way beyond the fire. "You guys do remember that I have super hearing, right?"

Scrambling to her feet, Annie hurried over to him, Duarte not far behind. "Auggie," she said, dropping to her knees beside him and helping him to sit up. "How do you feel?"

Auggie grimaced. "Like my head got run over by the space shuttle," he said, scrubbing at the dried blood on his cheeks.

Annie exchanged a glance with Duarte. "Do you know what year it is?" she asked.

The scrubbing motion stopped. "Two thousand ten," said Auggie. "And the president's Barack Obama. I'd tell you my name, but that's actually kinda complicated."

Annie let out her breath. "You suck," she said, batting Auggie lightly on the arm. "You are so not allowed to come out in the field with me ever again."

"Oh, come on," said Auggie. "You need a little potential brain damage now and then. Otherwise life gets boring."

Rolling her eyes, Annie helped Auggie to his feet. "Where are we?" he asked, turning slowly.

"If the readings the computer gave me just before we bailed out were right, we're in northern Finland," Annie said. "There's a village ten miles or so south of here and a town three miles north west."

"We should split up," Duarte said. "I'll take the village. Annie, you take Jake to the town."

"It's Auggie," said Auggie, and Duarte paused in the act of kicking out the fire.

"You'll always be Jake to me," he said.

"Jake's dead," Auggie said, and Duarte straightened up.

"I know," he said.

oOoOo

It didn't take long for them to collect up the few things they had, hide the parachute and scatter the remains of the fire. Actually, it probably took longer than it needed to - Annie got the impression that both Duarte and Auggie were stalling. Finally, they were done, though, and the three of them stood awkwardly in the little clearing, waiting for someone to speak first.

Annie always did suck at uncomfortable silences. "Goodbye, Kyle," she said, holding out her hand. "I'm sorry I didn't trust you."

Duarte smiled and took her hand, then pulled her into a hug. "You had your reasons," he said. "Dumont got inside your head. We've all been there."

"I wish I could punch his smug face," Annie said, and Dumont snorted.

"Yeah, we've all been there, too," he said.

Annie pulled back from the hug, and Auggie took a step forward.

"Kyle," he said, and cleared his throat. "It was good to see you again."

"You, too," Duarte said. "I'm glad you're not dead."

Auggie grinned a little at that, hugging Duarte briefly but hard.

"We'll stay in touch," Duarte said, and Auggie's grin faded.

"No," he said. "We won't."

Duarte hesitated, then nodded.

"No," he said. "I guess not." He stood for just a second longer, looking at Auggie like he couldn't really figure out what he was seeing. Then he turned and walked away.

They stood there until Annie could no longer see Duarte and - presumably - Auggie could no longer hear him. Then Annie shifted her weight and sighed.

"We should go," she said.

"Right," Auggie replied, presenting his arm to her. She took it, and they started walking. "I ever tell you about the time I shot Kyle?" Auggie said, just as they were stepping in among the trees.

"You _shot_ him?" Annie said.

"Yep," said Auggie, half-grinning. "Right in the gut."

Annie wiped her free hand on her pants, even though the last traces of Auggie's blood were ground into the creases in her skin and under her fingernails and weren't coming off without industrial cleanser. "Was he mad?"

"No, not mad," Auggie said. "Sore, but not mad." He was still smiling, but there was something wistful about it. "That was supposed to be a funny story," he said. "Guess it didn't work out."

Annie smiled. "He was a good friend to you, wasn't he?" she said.

"Best I ever had," Auggie said, then put a hand over hers on his arm. "One of the best."

They walked in silence for a little way, Annie thinking about Auggie shooting Duarte, about her shooting Auggie, about the way she'd almost let them all get killed by trusting what she was seeing and hearing rather than what she was told. And then again, Auggie had said _you can never trust anyone_. Which was right? She blew out her breath, and Auggie turned his head slightly at the sound.

"Something wrong?" he said.

"No, nothing." Annie said. "Just... I'm sorry for shooting you."

Auggie raised his eyebrows. "Are you sorry for saving all our lives?" he asked, and Annie shook her head.

"Is that really what I did?" she said, trying to put her thoughts into some kind of coherent order. "I mean, you said I shouldn't trust anyone, but then I trusted you. And I tried not to trust Duarte, but then I let him talk me into shooting you. I feel like I'm doing it all wrong." She ran her free hand through her hair, tugging at the tangles viciously. "Do you really think I'm cut out for this?"

Auggie was silent a moment or two before answering. "You remember what I told you on the plane?" he said, finally. "The two things you need to survive at the agency?"

"Yeah," Annie said. "Know what they have on you and remember who you were before you signed up."

Auggie nodded. "I think you're a lot better at that second one than I am," he said.

Annie blinked. That wasn't what she'd been expecting. Huh.

They walked on a little way, the only sound the whispering of their footsteps on the thick carpet of pine needles. It was cool, even though it was still summer, and Annie's breath smoked in the air. Who had she bee, before the CIA, before Auggie and Joan and Jai and before anyone had ever taken a shot at her and before she'd known that Ben Mercer was anything other than a beach bum who'd left her without an explanation?

She'd been Annie. Not the same Annie, but not so different, either. And maybe she could never be that Annie again - not with everything that had happened to her - but she could make sure that she didn't drift too far away. That was something she could do.

"So, who were you?" she asked finally. "Before you signed up, I mean."

"I was Jake Foley," Auggie said.

That wasn't what Annie expected either, although if she'd thought about it, it should have been. How long would it be before she automatically remembered that Auggie hadn't always been Auggie, before she could associate that past with him without it feeling alien? Maybe it would never happen. In some ways, she hoped it wouldn't.

"Hey, can I ask you a favour?" she said.

"Sure," said Auggie.

"No more secrets?" Annie said.

Auggie slowed and then halted, turning toward her, hands finding her shoulders.

"You know I can't promise you that, Annie," he said, and Annie felt her shoulders sag a little, even though this time she had mostly been expecting it. "But I can promise that I'll always be on your side. I hope that's enough."

Annie stood for a moment, scraping together the energy she had left, then nodded, taking Auggie's arm and setting off again. "It's enough," she said, and she was surprised to find out that it was true.

After a moment, Auggie sighed. "I know I don't deserve this," he said, "but can I ask _you_ a favour?"

Annie smiled. "Anything," she said.

oOoOo

The house was set a little way back from the gravel road, tucked in among the North Carolina beech trees. It was new enough that it looked weather-proof, but old enough to almost seem like it had grown there, bleached wooden boards blending in with the grey tree trunks, wrap-around porch twined with every kind of vegetation. Annie climbed the steps to the front door, noting the battered car half-hidden behind the house. Somebody was home.

She knocked and waited. In fact, she'd been waiting so long that she was beginning to think whoever was inside was hiding from her when finally the door swung open and a woman appeared in the doorway frowning out at her through a mess of curly hair and black-rimmed glasses.

"Can I help you?" she said.

"Oh, hi!" said Annie, trying out her biggest smile. "I'm really sorry to bother you, but I'm just visiting for the weekend and they told me in town you were a doctor?"

The woman's frown deepened. "A doctor?" she said.

"Yeah! You're Diane, right?" said Annie, and when the woman nodded, she rolled her shoulders a little. "See, I wrenched my shoulder about a week ago, and it feels a little twingey, and to be honest, I just wanted to get it checked out before driving all the way back to DC. I know it's an imposition, but if you wouldn't mind helping me out?"

The woman blinked a couple times, pushing her glass back up her nose. "Oh, well, I'm not exactly - I mean, yes, I'm a medical doctor, but I'm more of a researcher, really, so..." She trailed off and stepped back from the door. "You'd better come in," she said.

oOoOo

The inside of the house was just as homey as the outside, the floor well-kept boards and rag rugs, the walls lined with photographs. There was a framed diploma on one wall, _Diane Hughes_ printed in the centre in flowing Gothic script. Next to it was a photo of a man with messy hair grinning at the camera. Annie took a long look at it and bit her lip.

"So, it'll probably be fine if you just put a little ice-" Diane said, coming through from the kitchen and pausing in the doorway, brandishing a towel and an ice-cube tray. Annie plastered her smile back on and waved her hand at the photo.

"Oh, hey, I think I know this guy!" she said, and Diane frowned, taking a couple of steps forward and checking which photo she meant. "I mean, I used to know him. He was my brother's room-mate at Georgetown. Jack something, right?"

"Jake," said Diane, blinking rapidly.

"Yeah, that's right," Annie said. "What's he up to now? Oh my God, you two aren't-" she made a vague gesture, and Diane shook her head, curls flying.

"No, no," she said. "Actually, he's, uh." She looked away. "He's dead."

Annie didn't have to fake remorse. Sometimes this job sucked. "Oh God, I'm so sorry," she said. "How did he die?"

Diane closed her eyes for a second. "Saving lives," she said. "That was his job. Saving lives." She looked up, meeting Annie's gaze, almost defiant.

"Like a firefighter or something?" Annie asked.

"Or something," said Diane, and Annie decided that was it. Enough was enough.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I totally didn't mean to upset you. I need to learn when to shut the hell up."

"No," Diane said, putting the ice and towel down on a little table. "It's - I mean, it's kind of nice to talk about him, you know? I don't really know anyone now who knew him, and-" She shook her head. "I mean, when it happened, I thought I would never be OK again. And now - it's different. It doesn't hurt the same way any more." She shot Annie a worried look. "Do you think that's bad?"

Annie smiled. "I think it's what he'd want for you," she said, and Diane smiled too, her chin trembling a little.

"So," said Annie, and made her way to the couch, plopping down and patting the seat next to her. "Tell me all about Jake."

oOoOo

Finding Auggie in the CIA headquarters was sometimes a little tricky. Oh, sure, he was in his office a lot of the time, but he had a sneaky tendency of disappearing just when there was a tedious job to be done that was way beneath his level of expertise. Annie still hadn't figured out all the places he holed up in, but on Monday evening, a little over a week after she'd returned from Helsinki, she found him sitting on the bench by the fountain, staring morosely toward the water.

"Hey," she said, setting herself down next to him. "I thought this was my place for moping."

"Just keeping it warm for you," said Auggie. "How was your weekend?"

"Pretty awesome, actually," Annie said. "I went out to North Carolina, met this amazing woman. She's a doctor, but she mainly teaches at the university in Chapel Hill. Spends her summers in this beautiful house in the woods. It's like paradise out there."

"Sounds like a nice life," Auggie said. "You think it makes her happy?"

Annie thought about it. "Yeah," she said. "I think it does."

Auggie nodded, half-smiling. "Good," he said. "That's good."

"You know," said Annie, putting a hand on Auggie's arm. "You should really come out there with me next time I go. I'm sure she'd love to meet you."

Auggie sat still for a moment, then rose to his feet, Annie's hand slipping from his arm. "Jake Foley's dead," he said, his face turned away from her. "And he's going to stay that way."

Annie sighed and stood up, too. That was a battle for another time, and one she wasn't even sure she wanted to win. "And what about Auggie Anderson?" she said.

There was a pause, and then Auggie shook his head. "Auggie Anderson is tired and hungry," he said, "and he could really do with a beer."

"Oh _really_," Annie said, linking her arm through his. "Does that mean you're buying?"

"Hey," Auggie said, the tight lines on his face starting to smooth into a smile, "you never even brought me salted licorice back from Helsinki. You _owe_ me."

"Oh, come on," Annie said. "I shot you in the chest _and_ made you jump out of a plane. If anything, you owe _me_."

Auggie grinned at her. "Huh," he said, setting off toward the building and pulling her along with him. "When you put it like that, I guess I do." 


End file.
